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The
National Food Summit held at the Clark Free-port Zone
last week was called to discuss policies and programs,
attract bigger investments and launch development
programs that would impact favorably on food supplies
and prices amid a looming world food crisis.
In an
effort to show that her administration is serious in
ensuring “abundant, affordable and accessible” food
supply, President Arroyo announced the government would
allot some P40 billion for a program called FIELDS,
which stands for fertilizers, infrastructure and
irrigation, extension and education, loans, drying and
other postharvest facilities, and seeds.
Of this
amount, P15 billion would be used for agricultural loans
to farmers; P6 billion for infrastructure, such as
roll-on, roll-off ferry ports, farm-to-market roads and
no-frills airports for agricultural cargo; P6 billion
for irrigation; P5 billion for research and development,
capacity building, trainers and technicians and for the
agricultural and fisheries education system; P2 billion
for appropriate integrated processing and trading
centers in collaboration with the private sector; and
P500 million for fertilizer support and production.
Until
2010 some P8 billion will be used to procure both hybrid
and certified seeds. Early last week Mrs. Arroyo had
also announced an allotment of P5 billion as a subsidy
to rice farmers.
That
huge pile of money—taxpayer’s money, it must be
emphasized—going to agriculture is certainly good news.
It’s about time that food got the attention that it so
richly deserves. But we’re not likely to join the chorus
of hosannas for the administration and jump up and down
like chimpanzees now that government has seen it fit to
put its money where its mouth is.
Instead,
it’s important also to focus on other voices who see in
the summit a rather belated and even short-sighted
attempt to cope with a serious food crisis.
Sen.
Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said the event was all for “show,”
from which he expected paltry results. Sen. Francis
Escudero criticized the administration’s tendency to
hold summits to address crisis situations that the
government should have averted in the first place.
For his
part, Sen. Manuel Roxas II said the summit showed that
the government was caught flat-footed by the problems in
the supply of rice and pork. The summit, he suggested,
should have focused not only on licking the near-term
problems but also on laying down long-term reforms for
food security.
“What we
need is a 10-year food-security plan done quietly but
competently. It must be done soup-to-nuts style, or from
seed distribution to market access,” he said.
A very
solid point, indeed. But we prefer to go beyond the
politics and take the side of civil-society groups that
have been clamoring for a holistic and comprehensive
approach to food security since the late ’90s.
“Food
sovereignty” is a term coined by members of
international civil society as an alternative to the
narrower concept of food security. We quote at length
what’s been said about it to give the reader—and our
decision-makers—something to chew on.
“Food
sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and
culturally appropriate food produced through
ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their
right to define their own food and agriculture systems.
It puts those who produce, distribute and consume food
at the heart of food systems and policies rather than
the demands of markets and corporations.
“It
defends the interests and inclusion of the next
generation. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle
the current corporate trade and food regime, and
directions for food, farming, pastoral and fisheries
systems determined by local producers.
“Food
sovereignty prioritizes local and national economies and
markets and empowers peasant and family farmer-driven
agriculture, artisanal fishing, pastoralist-led grazing
and food production, distribution and consumption based
on environmental, social and economic sustainability.
“Food
sovereignty promotes transparent trade that guarantees
just income to all peoples and the rights of consumers
to control their food and nutrition. It ensures that the
rights to use and manage our lands, territories, waters,
seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of
those of us who produce food. Food sovereignty implies
new social relations free of oppression and inequality
between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social
classes and generations.
“The
food-sovereignty policy framework starts by placing the
perspective and needs of the majority at the heart of
the global food-policy agenda and embraces not only the
control of production and markets, but also the right to
food, people’s access to and control over land, water
and genetic resources and the use of environmentally
sustainable approaches to production. What emerges is a
persuasive and highly political argument for refocusing
the control of food production and consumption within
democratic processes rooted in localized food systems.”
Utopian?
Idealist? Perhaps. But maybe not. Hewing to this
framework, an alternative People’s Food Summit was held
also last week, ahead of the government’s version, at
the University of the Philippines attended by civil
society groups, including Catholic bishops.
They
proposed the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Program, saying that this should “be placed at
the center of our country’s agricultural development,
transformation and competitiveness.” They also called
for the scrapping of the land-conversion law, which has
become an obstacle to the improvement of domestic rice
production, based on reports that 9,000 hectares of rice
lands are being converted for other uses every year
since 2002, which is equal to 50,000 tons of palay or
32,000 tons of milled rice.
These
proposals are sound, because they proceed from a broad
framework of social justice and attaining
self-sufficiency in rice, our staple food. We don’t have
any quarrel with putting up more rural infrastructure or
giving more loans to farmers, but stop-gap measures and
knee-jerk responses to the looming food crisis will not
do.
If the
Arroyo administration is really serious about achieving
food security, then it should take a long, hard look at
the food-sovereignty framework adopted by civil society.
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