Food security and employment: A President’s lasting legacy

If I were the president of this country with two remaining years left, and were serious about antidynasty reforms and shorn of political perpetuation, I would not waste my remaining time shellacking my tenure but would go out into the night, leaving a lasting legacy that the small people would long remember. I would make the Philippines the rice-producing capital of the region and provide full food security to my countrymen.

With the gross domestic product hurtling downward to 3.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025, a full year growth of only 4.5 percent, which is much lower than the 5.7 percent growth in 2024—and a far cry from the government’s 5.5 to 6.5 percent target, the slide seems inevitable. With the economic priorities on the back burner and Congress tied up in hopeless and pathetic, acrimonious political debates, accusing each other of all kinds of anomalies, we are getting nowhere.

Everyone is talking about the flood anomalies and that justice be meted out as swiftly as possible, but no one is worrying about the fact that we are now in an economic rut. It is pathetic to see how the politicians are trying to outsmart one another and play up to the gallery. This spectacle of trying to exact justice will end up in an empty victory if we are left with nothing to eat. We are wasting precious time and charting a grave and dim economic future.

The best thing we can suggest for the President to do now is to put top priority on the next two years’ economic agenda to fast-track a highly doable food security program:

Create a rice supply and production board, to be chaired by the Department of Agriculture (DA), to start massive planting immediately of hybrid rice varieties in the idle farms in the penal colonies, all 30,000 hectares of them, most of which are available to plant several 500-hectare economically sized farms. At the right time, hand over these developed farms to private enterprises to own and manage.

The importation of rice must completely stop by 2027. Bad weather has always been the convenient scapegoat for importation. The number of farmers engaged in rice planting is now a small minority and has suffered enough after their farms were encroached upon by subdivision developers. The DA must roll up its sleeves and do the planting for a change.

As a component of food security, the production of livestock will come along with the rice production farms for the critical meat supply in the next two years. Again, the lame excuse of swine fever infestations to justify importation is perennially given even though there are a host of preventive veterinary remedies available. The livestock farm production initially done by the government techs of the University of the Philippines Los Baños will then be given to private enterprises to own and manage.

What better legacy could a national leader leave than successfully providing employment and food security that lasts?