A dysfunctional department

Our farm and food sector has been a miserable failure. It’s a harsh statement to make, but how else can one describe it when (1) the average farmer has languished in a perennial state of poverty, (2) food prices are much higher than those of our neighbors, and even in rich countries where average household incomes are a multiple of ours, (3) our farm-based exports are a mere fraction of those of our comparable neighbors, with our top traditional farm exports actually falling (coconut, banana) or gone (sugar), (4) dependence on imports keeps growing for our food and farm product needs, and (5) our young children suffer from higher malnutrition, contributing to education outcomes that are among the worst in the world? I could list more, but that’s not the point of this article.

This is about how these glaring failures trace to a deeply dysfunctional institution tasked with the mission to guide and oversee the development of the sector, which I once described as “a broken organization” (No Free Lunch, 1/17/23). Don’t get me wrong: I like Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. and most of his senior officials, whom I know are equipped and determined to lift up the sector. I especially appreciate the many men and women in the department who have worked with professionalism and integrity over the years. But I see them weighed down by an institution and governance structure and mindset that keeps them from defining the sector’s true problems, identifying and pursuing the right solutions, and taking proper action to make those solutions work.

I was in a recent meeting with one of 14 DA undersecretaries (count them), with the unwieldy official title “Undersecretary-Designate for Identified High-Value Export Crops and Agri-Fishery Export Development and Promotion,” as indicated on the DA website. The convoluted title, which could as well collapse into the two words “Export Development,” seemingly reflects the thinking that led to the same convoluted structure the department has evolved into, as readily seen in the organizational chart on the DA website. I find it encouraging, though, that Philip C. Young brings into this new role his solid experience as a multi-awarded food exporter himself, having founded and led Global Food Solutions, a Laguna-based food manufacturer-exporter. He candidly noted that for the first time, DA is finally giving high-level attention to agricultural export development. And he should know, having long been on the receiving end of the department’s export development services—or lack thereof. This age-old lack is appalling in itself, and comes with the DA’s long-standing inordinate preoccupation with rice. The supreme irony here is that rather than improve, our rice industry has steadily deteriorated over the years.

Exactly 20 years ago, I wrote here: “Quite clearly, there has been a failure of governance on a massive scale in Philippine agriculture. Overseen by a government department with one of the biggest budgets in the Philippine bureaucracy, the fact that the bulk of the stakeholders in the sector remain the poorest in our society seems a glaring anomaly.” My own frustration lies in how so many recommendations had been made over many years for reforming the agricultural bureaucracy, but had largely fallen on deaf ears. (I was in fact directly involved in two of them, in 2007 and 2011.)

A bill for an Agriculture Bureaucracy Restructuring Act was actually filed alongside the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act of 1997 (Republic Act No. 8435), but was never passed. Former President Joseph Estrada issued Executive Order No. 338 reorganizing the DA before stepping down in 2001, but the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration just put it aside. Frequent changes in the DA leadership (which changed five times under her watch) killed any further such efforts. No fundamental bureaucratic reform in the DA has been pursued since, with only piecemeal changes done. And rather than rationalize and streamline, which was logical in the face of the legally mandated devolution of its work, it has instead evolved into a top-heavy institution with 14 undersecretaries and 16 assistant secretaries.

I am not claiming to have the right solutions. My own experience in the area of public administration and organizational management goes only so far. But what to me is clear and worth stressing here is the long-overdue and urgent need for an independent, honest-to-goodness organizational audit of the DA, an institutional and operational audit on the entire agricultural governance system, and the surgical institutional reforms and change management program required. A detached view would be helpful here, and I’d like to see our usual international development partners step in to fulfill this need.