Want Food Security For The Philippines? Work First For PH Farmers’ Income Security!

Income security: This concept is highly original – that is the genius of a son of a farmer speaking. Everyone else talks of food security. 

The way you help the farmer is the way you help your country.

In San Mateo, Isabela, rice farmers harvested 9 MT/ha and netted P115,000 (Eireene Jairee Gomez, 07 December 2018, “Isabela Rice Farmers’ Harvest Reaches 9 MT/ha[1],” Manilatimes.net). Source of data: Helen Pasicolan, lead of direct-seeded rice technology promotion of PhilRice in San Mateo. Yes: Double the harvest, double the income!

If the farmers knew that their farming would emancipate them from perpetual poverty, they would do what we would tell them to do, right? Right!

So let us begin from the End, not the Beginning, of the Value Chain: Farmers’ Income Security, InSecurity.

The InSecurity Value Chain comprises these:

(1) Loan guarantee – low interest.

(2) Lend tenure – not land tenure; farm consolidation is enough.

(3) Seed sense – low-cost seeds.

(4) Weed master – trash farming, low-cost cultivation, weeds turned to organic fertilizer.

(5) Maximum spacing – square planting.

(6) Minimum irrigation – alternate wet & dry.

(7) Maximum crop protection – multiple cropping.

(8) Optimum grains drying – low-cost dryer.

(9) Minimum labor – minimum tillage, no transplanting.

(10) Maximum yield – healthy crops.

(11) Optimum storage – harvest in warehouse, low-cost storage.

(12) Emergency loan guarantee – against harvest in storage.

(13) Maximum returns – look at all those low-cost inputs above!

That is how we will guarantee Income Security, InSecurity, to farmers, whatever crop(s) they plant. With InSecurity, farmers will be excited to farm all the more so that in a little while, the country will enjoy food security! (left icon from SANREM Innovation Lab[2], right from GRAAM[3])

I repeat: We must guarantee InSecurity. The average yield for the country is 4 MT/ha – so, that San Mateo harvest of 9 MT/ha is more than twice, and suggests a farmer’s average income of more than twice too. Who is the farmer who does not want to minimize his costs and maximize his returns?!

For InSecurity, we must manage the end of the value chain, via Inclusive Marketing, InMarketing. I’m borrowing from the strategy of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, based in India, when PH Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie was Director General – they called it inclusive market-oriented development, IMOD. The farmers were assisted up to and including the marketing of their produce, so they got what they deserved and not what the merchants would give them! IMOD was also characterized by warrantage, whereby the farmers during lean times could make emergency loans against their harvests stored in warehouses, the harvest to be sold when the prices were right.

Did you notice? Individual farm technicians cannot possibly assist individual farmers attain those San Mateo double harvests and double incomes by themselves alone. In other words, we want to make the rice farmers rich continually. So:

InSecurity calls for complete and farmer-friendly farm management via a cooperative. With a coop, in the end, the price is right!@517

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[1] https://www.manilatimes.net/2020/03/06/news/headlines/another-petition-filed-vs-abs-cbn/700629/?utm_source=izooto&utm_medium=push_notifications&utm_campaign=petition%20filed%20vs%20ABS-CBN&utm_content=&utm_term=

[2] https://sanremcrsp.cired.vt.edu/public/about/

[3] http://www.graam.org.in