Ill-equipped and ill-prepared

Listening to government representatives in a recent forum convened to discuss the “triple shocks” now impacting our agriculture sector, I came out disappointed, exasperated, and worried. My takeaway from that gathering was that the various government and nongovernment entities that ought to be jointly pursuing solutions to the huge challenges now threatening our farms and fisheries (1) don’t seem to be talking to each other, (2) are duplicating rather than synergizing efforts and initiatives, and (3) have no sense of urgency to come up with a coherent plan and move proactively to overcome the previous two.

Last week, the Los Baños-based South East Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) “bumped heads together” to examine the outlook and consider needed solutions in the face of those triple shocks: climate extremes, animal and plant disease outbreaks, and geopolitical conflicts. On the first, the impending problem is the feared “Super El Niño” anticipated to severely hurt our farms and fisheries this year and next. On the second, the big issue is African swine fever (ASF), which has led our livestock output to decline successively at an average annual rate of -3.2 percent for the last eight years. There’s also avian influenza or bird flu that has led to the elimination of one million chickens; Fusarium wilt or Panama disease that has decimated banana hectarage by 15,500 hectares; the “cocolisap” insect pest that as of last year had infected over half a million coconut trees nationwide; and more. The third shock is about the ongoing Iran and Russia-Ukraine wars, West Philippine Sea tensions, and Trump tariffs, and how all these affect global and regional supply chains and tighten access to and hike the prices of vital fuel and fertilizers.

Represented in the forum were the Department of Agriculture (DA) through senior officials and officers concerned with rice, irrigation, fertilizers, and livestock; Department of Science and Technology through officers concerned with climate and livestock research; Philippine Statistics Authority; and experts from the International Rice Research Institute, University of the Philippines Los Baños, and others.

My disappointment came from the failure of government speakers to concretely address the stated objectives of the forum, which Searca had amply communicated beforehand as to (1) determine the impact of the shocks on food production based on climate outlook, affected production areas, and in animal production, the status of the ASF and bird flu; (2) agree on immediate actions to soften the impact of the shocks on farmers and consumers; (3) highlight scalable solutions already being applied in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; and (4) develop national and regional short-, medium-, and long-term measures and funding required. But what Searca Director Mercy Sombilla hoped to be a problem-solving session ended up sounding at times more like one for horn-tooting, as government speakers talked more of the wonderful things they have been doing or still planning to do. I saw little effort to relate them to the threefold problems now staring us in the face, and respond to any of the above objectives.

My exasperation came out of the realization, and the guests’ inadvertent revelation, that the concerned government entities were largely working independently of one another. Some even admitted publicly (in what to me amounted to a confession) that they were pleased to learn what the others were doing–yet they should have been communicating and working with one another months, even years ago! I suddenly missed my days in government in the 1990s under then President Fidel V. Ramos, who constantly asserted to us in his Cabinet that “everything is inter-agency now!” and for whom “UST”–unity, solidarity, and teamwork–was a religion. He thus created countless task forces, committees, commissions, or councils as appropriate, and mounted numerous “summits,” to tackle the whole range of issues and problems demanding solutions from the government. But I was appalled last week to see that within the DA alone, “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” seems to be the order of the day. Someone quipped that with 14 undersecretaries and 15 assistant secretaries, it should be no surprise at all.

And so I came out of the forum worried, even fearful, that we are setting ourselves up for a massive disaster of our own making. I privately quipped to my seatmate that we are in deep excrement (or its four-letter synonym). Everyone agreed that Searca did well to bring the group together, but should keep doing it until its intended objectives for doing so are finally achieved. Unless we keep bumping the right heads together, we will be ill-equipped and ill-prepared for the disaster that has been lurking around the corner, ready to spring at all of us any moment.

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