Vote for farmer-friendly leaders
Even as Republic Act No. 7160 or the Local Government Code (LGC) devolved agriculture services to local government units (LGUs) in 1991, the mandated devolution hardly happened. To this date, governance and management of the country’s agriculture and fisheries sector remains largely top-down. The glaring evidence of this is our agriculture bureaucracy, which has evolved into a top-heavy organization with 13 undersecretaries (usecs) and 14 assistant secretaries (asecs). The norm was only three of each in the 1990s under then Presidents Cory Aquino and Fidel Ramos; in fact, government departments’ regular budgets provide for only three usecs and three asecs to this date. Those beyond the prescribed three are funded from special budgets and coterminous with the secretary who designated them.
Why hasn’t the devolution of agriculture happened the way it should have? It was, after all, well-grounded on the sound governance principle of subsidiarity, which holds that the governance unit closest to the problems could best solve them. The fundamental flaw, I believe, was in how the Department of Agriculture (DA) neglected to assume responsibility for building LGU capacities to take over its “rowing” functions. The idea was for DA to work more effectively through the LGUs, while it focuses on “steering.” Instead, it chose to continue “rowing,” persisted with top-down management with centralized programs, and continued to service farmers directly rather than empower LGUs to do it.
But capacitating LGUs was not enough. While the LGC channeled more funds to the LGUs from national tax revenues through their internal revenue allotments or IRA, these were far less than what the LGUs needed to effectively fulfill their devolved functions. The IRA mostly took care of the salaries of the staff passed on by the DA, Department of Health, and Department of Social Welfare and Development, but there was little to fund the work they had to do and the materials needed to do it. While the law required 20 percent of the IRA to be spent on development, there were competing needs for those limited funds and agriculture seemed rarely top-of-mind. Even when the Supreme Court’s 2018 Mandanas-Garcia ruling further expanded the LGUs’ revenue shares in what is now called their national tax allocation or NTA, it was wishful thinking to expect that LGUs would now spend much more on their farmers.
The problem is that too many mayors don’t see agriculture as a priority even in agricultural areas. Thus, the municipal agriculturist gets little operating budget, if at all. A DA-commissioned study team that I led encountered a municipal agriculture officer (MAO) with only one liter of gasoline allowance for his motorcycle per week. We’ve seen MAOs serving as the mayor’s driver, or more commonly, as stall fee collectors in the local public markets. It’s a common observation that local chief executives prefer to spend their budgets on visible structures like municipal buildings, sports complexes, waiting sheds, bus terminals, markets, and lampposts—and I won’t begin to talk of ulterior reasons why.
To its credit, the DA began to see the light in 2018 when Secretary Manny Piñol heeded the advice of Los Baños-based agriculture veterans to pilot a province-led agricultural and fisheries extension system (Pafes). It proved so successful in Ilocos Sur that Secretary William Dar later rolled out Pafes to more, then all provinces. It makes sense that provincial governments, which the law requires to all have an agriculture office, should coordinate agricultural services across its component municipalities and cities—rather than let the MAOs fend for themselves, as was the case after 1991. With Pafes, provinces formulate a Collaborative Provincial Agriculture and Fisheries Extension Program (CPAFEP), which as the name suggests, harnesses collaboration and partnership across various agencies and stakeholders. As conceived, Pafes would have the DA download operating funds to provinces via matching lump sum grants to leverage and augment the latter’s limited resources. The combined funds would support the costs to implement the province’s homegrown CPAFEP and Provincial Commodity Investment Plan that embodies its defined agriculture priorities. This mechanism would avoid the ongoing distortion of having national commodity “banner” programs thwart provincial priorities, when fund releases tied to commodities may not necessarily be what a province needs or deems to be of prior importance.
Our study team visited provinces all around the country and witnessed Pafes work very well where the governor and his/her mayors take to heart the importance of investing in their farmers. We’ve also seen pitfalls where these local executives don’t. That’s why we need to vote for governors and mayors who value the long-term welfare of our farms and farmers. Our agricultural future and food security hinges on them.
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cielito.habito@gmail.com
