Wednesday, July 02, 2008 Osmeña: Politics in food resources By Antonio V. Osmeña Estatements
THANKS to improved agricultural technologies, practices and policies, food production has in-creased since 1950 in all continents, except the Philippines and Africa.
Despite this success, there are some signs of potential trouble. First, although world average per capita food production increased between 1950 and today, its rate of increase has been steadily declining each decade. Second, plagued by the fastest population growth of any continent, extensive soil erosion and under-investment in agriculture, the Philippines’ average food production fell – a situation some food experts fear may spread in coming years to other regions of the world.
Third, although the percentage of the population suffering from hunger and malnutrition has declined by several orders of magnitude since 1950, there are more hungry and malnourished people today than in 1950 because of the large increase in population since that time.
Practically, one out of six people on earth is either too poor to buy enough food or lack sufficient land to grow enough of his/her own food.
Finally, 50 to 60 years ago, most countries—including the Philippines—were self-sufficient in food. But today, most have to import some of their food or are barely self-sufficient.
The Philippines then was self-sufficient in rice production but along the years, bad government policy caused underinvestment, making our country the biggest importer of rice in the region.
Today’s only major food exporting nations are the United States (which provides about 55 percent of all grain exports), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France and Argentina. Prolonged bad weather or economic problems in these countries could spell disaster for hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, mostly in many less developed countries (LDCs), which now depend on these food-exporting nations for increasing amounts of food supplies.
This increasing dependence on imports drains the national income of these LDCs and reduces opportunities for investments in producing more of their own food.
The lack of economic incentive as a limiting factor is the major cause of our country’s agricultural standstill. Regardless of how much arable land is available, land will not be used to produce food for other people unless farmers can make some profit on a year-to-year basis. Due to lack of economic incentive, much of the potentially arable land is not cultivated.
Most economists argue that the single most important way to increase food production is through a system of individual land-owning farmers who are able to sell their crops in a free market, without price controls but with price supports to guarantee a reliable market and minimum profit even when the weather leads to poor harvests. To help keep enough farmers in business, government must also be sure that there is adequate storage, transportation and marketing network.
Agricultural economics is a tricky business. Government price supports, cash subsidies and import restrictions can be used to stimulate crop production by guaranteeing farmers a certain minimum return on their investment from year to year. As you can see, encouraging farmers to put idle land into production and produce enough food at a price that consumers – especially poor people – can afford and still keep enough farmers in business is a complex and difficult problem.
It is indeed ironic that use of our country’s rich natural resources in order to produce wide varieties of food has not been a priority government policy, such as aquaculture and mariculture, cultivating more land and stop loss of existing cropland due to urbanization and erosion.
Our leaders must realize that losses of farmland are essentially irreversible.
The rate may increase because of the urban-to-rural shift that spreads people out and puts even more pressure on crop-land, rangeland and forests.
The danger in this economic and environmental tradeoff is that without a plan and land-use laws for preserving a certain fraction of the country’s cropland (especially prime land), the ability of the country to provide food for its population can be eroded.
At present, no one knows the existing and potential farmland that is protected under any existing national or local land-use policies. Although President Arroyo has issued an executive order declaring a moratorium on the conversion of agricultural land into other uses.
