FIFTY years ago, Dean Jeremias Montemayor, in a speech to the graduating class of Ateneo de Tuguegarao, said the cause of the poverty of our nation is because the farmer has no money. The graft and corruption, the lack of tax collection, the poverty of the people, the ignorance prevailing, the lack of jobs, and a host of other ills were all due to the farmers not having any buying power. He was right and still right. The farmer has been discriminated upon and oppressed by government policies that can be called “prime commodities price stabilization.” This favors the urban dwellers at expense of the farmer.
You don’t hear too much about this policy but it still is in force. Recently the price of chicken went up from
R80 a kilo to R120. And immediately there was an importation of 5,000 tons of chicken. Why? Why not allow the market to correct the imbalance rather than this artificial intervention to the supply of chicken? The reason is because the urban dweller is vocal and powerful. The farmer has no voice. With a higher price the farmer would produce more and the price will go down but to the benefit of the farmer. But we have kept the farmer in his condition of bare feet and shaky nipa hut as when Magellan arrived in the Philippines.
The solution of Dean Montemayor was to organize the farmer. He was successful in organizing the Federation of Free Farmers. But judging from the results 50 years later, it was a good idea but not enough to lift the farmers out of poverty. It was only one component of a total package that is needed. One of these components is financial support. (The Land Bank has been a failure in its main mandate of helping the farmer. It does not even lend to the small farmer directly now.) Crop insurance from natural disasters, technology input, vigilance against "prime commodity" interventions, and a number of other inputs besides organization are necessary for a total package.
Secretary Lorenzo with his high-breed rice and irrigation emphasis is working mightily in the right direction of using technology to help the farmer. Our farmers are some of the most ignorant farmers in the world. And it is not their fault that the breakthroughs in our research and agricultural institutions do not reach them. Many of them do not even know the meaning of NPK and the different effects of its components. The potential of the native talents of our farmers have not been tapped. New technology in organic fertilizer using microorganisms to enhance nitrogen and phosphorous availability to the plant has not reached the farmers.
Mechanization is a must, at least in the long term. Little or nothing is being done to help the small farmers in this, unlike the availability of tractor pools in Taiwan and other neighboring countries. Emphasis on high-value crops, like orchards, and post-harvest facilities are in the right direction but still hardly visible. But the poverty of the farmer is not a concern only of the administration. Unless everyone keeps an eye open and chips in his bit to get money into the pocket of the farmer, we are doomed to the regression we have experienced in the past 50 years.
Dean Montemayor points to the farmer as the base of our economic pyramid. Unless that base is solidified there is not much that can be done. Without income, the farmers cannot save and without savings, we cannot invest. Without local buying power, there can be no industrialization but only importation because the local market cannot supply the volume necessary for the manufacturers to make a profit. The result is importation and the relegation to exporting raw materials.
Giving the farmer buying power is not an easy job. Organizing is helpful; financing the small farmers is necessary; crop insurance is needed; technology for better seeds and organic fertilizers have to be enhanced; high-value crop sideline; post harvest facilities are needed, mechanization; and a number of other ingredients in a total approach can be done. But it is not the work only of the administration but everyone who wants the country to get out of the poverty and helplessness we are all in. <emeterio_barcelon@yahoo.com>
