|
THE
Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (Acef) was
part of the government’s response to the popular demand
for “safety nets” following the decision in the
mid-1990s of then-President Fidel Ramos and his allies
in Congress to open up the Philippine economy to global
free trade under the so-called Uruguay Round.
Consisting of duties collected from the importation of
agricultural products under the minimum access volume
mechanism, the Acef was created in 1996. It was supposed
to help our farmers withstand the flood of imports and
even develop their ability to compete with produce from
overseas.
The Acef
was made possible by Republic Act 8178, also known as
the Agricultural Tariffication Act. At the operational
level, the minimum amount of Acef assistance was set at
P3 million and a maximum amount was supposed to have
been established by the Acef executive committee with
the technical assistance of the Program Development
Service of the Department of Agriculture (DA).
The Acef
was offered to various public and private entities
seeking to support and improve agriculture and
fisheries, including local governments; state
universities and colleges; DA units from staff bureaus,
regional field units, including the regional integrated
agricultural research centers and regional fisheries
research and development centers, attached agencies and
controlled corporations, Office of the Secretary’s
service units and programs and the general public.
Since
its enactment, the Acef was able to raise some P10
billion—but by the time RA 8178 was to have lapsed in
December, it was found that only a little more than P3
billion had actually been spent. That notwithstanding,
Congress and Malacañang moved to give the Acef a new
lease on life.
In his
sponsorship speech urging the Acef’s extension, Sen.
Edgardo Angara pointed out: “Without access to credit,
small farmers will have a hard time surviving the period
before harvest and invest in more seeds or equipment.”
He
added: “What makes the Acef special is that it provides
credit to small farmers and [fishermen] at zero-interest
and without collateral.”
In
February President Arroyo signed the law extending the
term of the Acef to 2015. Among other things, the
amendment prevented the return of some P6 billion or so
in unused Acef money to the National Treasury.
The
Acef’s extension delighted Agriculture Secretary Arthur
Yap. He said it would help his department attain its
goal of helping small farmers move beyond primary
agriculture and into value-added higher-earning
enterprises.
Yap
added that the extended Acef program will also help the
DA significantly reduce postharvest losses that cut back
on agricultural productivity and farm incomes, thereby
“boosting agricultural productivity [and] improving… the
profitability of farming and fishing, especially for its
small stakeholders.”
The Acef
was extended weeks before high rice prices suddenly
shocked the nation. Now with the cost of the national
staple skyrocketing, the question begs to be asked: So
what has the fund been good for?
As rice
prices continued to increase, Sen. Manuel Roxas II
complained that over the last nine years the Acef’s
impact on the farming sector has been less than
significant. Now that it has been granted seven more
years, the remaining fund should go to strengthening
production, he added.
As if
the underutilization of the Acef were not bad enough, of
the P3 billion worth of loans thus far released, only 3
percent has gone to projects related to rice
production—prompting Roxas to say: “It’s high time that
we review how the Acef is being used.”
Evidently, the Acef has yet to live up to its original
billing as a safety net. Since its adoption, Filipinos
have seen the importation of rice and other produce
mount. The construction of irrigation, farm-to-market
roads, postharvest equipment and facilities, as well as
the availability of extension credit, research and
development and other similar forms of assistance—all of
which the fund’s proponents promised—have not kept pace
with growing demand at both farm and marketplace.
True,
Yap deserves credit for helping raise the output of rice
farmers. Still, congressional oversight of how he and
his department use the Acef to improve agricultural
productivity needs to be intensified.
If may
not be as bad as the plunder of public funds, but the
underutilization of resources allocated to achieve food
security comes pretty close.
Boost output
As the
country continues to reel from the shock of high rice
prices, the time has come for DA officials and other
authorities to take a good look at the so-called system
of rice intensification, or SRI for short.
As a
method for increasing rice yields, SRI was invented by a
Jesuit priest, Henri de Laulanie, in
Madagascar
in 1983. Later, Norman Uphoff, director of the
International Institute for Food, Agriculture and
Development at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York,
from 1990 to 2005, helped spread SRI from
Madagascar
to other countries.
Uphoff
saw how farmers in
Madagascar,
whose yields used to average 2 tons a hectare, began to
harvest 8 tons per hectare with SRI. Uphoff was quickly
persuaded of the merits of the system, and in 1997 he
started to promote SRI in Asia.
As of
2007 the beneficial effects of SRI methods have been
documented in 28 countries, most recently in
Bhutan,
Iraq, Iran and Zambia. Governments in the largest
rice-producing countries—China, India and Indonesia—are
now said to be supporting SRI extension. In
India,
SRI concepts and practices have reportedly also been
applied with success to such crops as sugar cane, finger
millet and wheat.
In the
Philippines, one of the promoters of SRI is IT
engineer-cum-social activist Robert Verzola. In a 2004
paper titled “SRI: Practices and Results in the
Philippines,” he found the average yield of SRI trials
to be 6.13 tons a hectare—or 104-percent more than the
national average of 3 tons each hectare.
Worldwide, Verzola said, yield gains from SRI have
ranged from 14 percent in China to 209 percent in
Gambia. The practices that attained these yields
include; use of younger seedlings; one seedling per hill
and wider spacing between hills; avoiding seedling-root
damage; moist, not flooded, rice fields; regular use of
mechanical weeder; and compost instead of chemical
fertilizers.
Verzola
and his associates have invited the media and other
parties to see for themselves how SRI has boosted rice
production at farms in Malolos, Bulacan, and Moncada,
Tarlac. Perhaps our lawmakers and DA officials might
also want to take Verzola up on his invitation. |
