Agriculture fund: Is it for real?

ON DISTANT SHORE
By Val G. Abelgas

It is reassuring to know that President Aquino is not leaving the farmers alone after all farm lands subject to land reform have been turned over to them. The President has ordered the release of P1 billion to fund an Agrarian Production Credit Program aimed at helping farmers across the country put up post-harvest facilities and buy farm equipment, and to finance other agricultural projects.

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said the implementation of the ACPC complements the President’s commitment to fully implement land reform across the country by 2016.

Abad said the ACPC would help ensure the sustainable and effective production of crops nationwide in addition to boosting the income of farmer-beneficiaries. Prior to this, he said, agrarian reform beneficiaries received meager credit assistance, resulting in limited crop production and slower economic growth among beneficiary households.

Land distribution to farmers who are tilling the land is just a part of a comprehensive agrarian reform program. A program that assists beneficiary farmers to increase productivity in their farm lands and improve their economic situation by providing them loans, infrastructure and marketing support, seeds and fertilizers and farm equipment, and training and education is what differentiates agrarian reform from land reform.

Agrarian reform corrects centuries of injustice under a feudal society where non-tillers or landowners are the ones who benefit from the labor of the farmers or the tillers. It is hoped that by transferring ownership of the land to the farmers, they would be motivated to produce more since the products of their labor would benefit them directly, instead of going to the non-tilling landowners.

However, it is imperative upon the government to provide support to the farmer beneficiaries to enable them to increase productivity and thereby increase their income from the land and be able to contribute to the national economy.

Without this support, the land reform program is bound to fail and the farmers would eventually abandon their farms, or sell them back to the moneyed non-tillers.

There have been many agricultural programs that were designed to help small farmers, but many of them failed because while the intent of the programs were noble on paper, it soon became clear that the initiators and implementors did not really have the interest of the farmers in mind, but only their own selfish interests.

One need not look far down history to see that under the kind of leadership that we have had, any land reform program was bound to fail.

Under the administration of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, billions of pesos were allotted to programs that were designed to help the farmers achieve economic independence. Among these were the P720-million fertilizer fund, the P3.1-billion irrigation project, the P5-billion swine program, the P120-M Gintong Masagana Ani (GMA) program, and the P455-million ice-making machine program for fishermen.

For some reason, the release of the funds for all these projects was timed a few months before the elections in 2004, 2007 and 2010. The fertilizer millions apparently did not go to the farmers but went to the campaign kitties of the administration party’s candidates for congressmen, governors and mayors. The P5 billion that were supposed to be used to buy piglets for farmers were also obviously derailed because not a single piglet’s shriek was heard. What ever happened to the P3.1 billion for irrigation projects is unknown because I have not heard of a single dam or irrigation canal built under the program. And the P455 million probably froze before any ice could be made from the non-existent ice machines.

Whatever happened to all those programs? Were they ever implemented? How much were released, and how much have been done? Will they ever be implemented?

The politicians must stop using the farmers for their own agenda. The Philippines has been lagging behind its neighbors in agriculture, which propelled many Asian nations, such as Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Vietnam to rapid economic growth.

The country needs to go back to the basics. Agriculture can provide the answer to spreading economic development to the provinces, which, in turn, will help decongest the urban centers. A successful agrarian reform program, with the government providing full support to the farmer beneficiaries, can help boost countryside development, and consequently, national economic recovery.

We hope that the P1-billion fund released by the Aquino administration would jumpstart the rebound of the agricultural sector. Let’s hope that this program and other agricultural projects that would soon be launched by the administration would not follow the crooked path that Arroyo’s programs pursued.

But then again, why is the P1-billion fund being released just a few months before the May elections? Just asking.

(valabelgas@aol.com)