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DAVAO CITY—The former plan to shift Mindanao’s reliance on
agriculture to industrialization turned out to be an
inappropriate program, contributing to the rice crisis
that erupted early this year, an initial assessment on
the Mindanao Development Plan 2000 has indicated.
This was
one of the findings gleaned from the documents and
reports churned out by several agencies implementing the
development plan put out by the defunct Office of the
Presidential Assistant for Mindanao, said Ednar Carlos
Dayanghirang, a member of the review team. He said the
program emphasized shifting the reliance of Mindanao on
agriculture to industrialization. “Look at the heavy
subsidy on the importation of rice and less allocation
to agriculture production,” he said.
“This
kind of thinking would mean that, rather than finding
ways to increase production, the government has to
import rice to ensure that there is adequate supply for
us,” he told a business forum here last week. The
program thrust stunted the growth of agriculture by
discouraging production, he added.
Prices
of rice went up sharply in summer this year, reaching as
much as P52 a kilo for the premium rice and P48 for the
other well-milled varieties, from their prevailing
prices slightly above the P30 level for the premium
variety.
This
forced the government National Food Authority (NFA) to
import rice from Vietnam, and later from Thailand, to
stave off serious social and political crises in the
southern and central regions of Mindanao, where the
shortage of affordable rice was severe.
A recent
report filed by the Mindanao Economic Development
Council (Medco) said, however, that there was no
shortage of rice in months immediately before the rice
crisis. As of the first three months of the year, rice
production of Mindanao posted an increase of 4.78
percent from 953,623 metric tons during the same period
last year. Rice farms produced a total of 999,212 metric
tons in the first quarter this year. It was Caraga
region, composed of the two Agusan and two Surigao
provinces, including the newly created Dinagat Island
province, which registered the highest growth in rice
production at 12.85 percent.
Region
10, or Northern Mindanao, posted 10.92 percent, for the
next high-yielding region, followed by Region 12, or
most of Central Mindanao, at 10.11 percent.
Region
9, or Western Mindanao, comprising the Zamboanga
Peninsula, was third at 5.93 percent, and Region 11, or
Southern Mindanao, at 4.06 percent. Only the Autonomous
Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) registered negative
growth of -9.1 percent.
In an
earlier interview, the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics
(BAS) said the increases in production came as the
grains sector suffered a dwindling size of the area
planted to rice during the last decade. The increase in
production was the due to the widespread use of
high-yielding varieties, the BAS added.
Dayanghirang said the result of the review would be
made the basis of the next long-term development plan,
the Mindanao 2020, which would place importance on food
sufficiency than food security.
“In food
security, the government spends a lot on importation. In
food sufficiency, we encourage the increase in
production of our farmers,” he said. He added the
government ban on the conversion of rice farms to other
agriculture crop uses may help contain the rapid shift
of land conversion to cash crop plantations, like banana
and mango.
Mindanao
Plan 2000 was started in 1995, a month after this
southern Philippine island was also made the Philippine
participant to the newly formed Brunei, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines-East Asean Growth Area. This
subregional grouping was established by consensus in
March 1994. |
