Aquino ties DA chief to post till 2016

DAVAO CITY—He may be one of the officials President Benigno Aquino III often praises in his speeches but Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala isn’t one of those the Chief Executive will endorse for any elective post in 2013.

“I’m sure he won’t be running next year,” the President said in a speech before people’s organizations involved in the Department of Agriculture’s Mindanao Rural Development Program.

“He has an obligation to me until 2016,” Mr. Aquino added.

He has tasked Alcala with addressing food security, something that the President on various occasions said the agriculture secretary had accomplished more than satisfactorily.

The President reiterated Monday that the Philippines under Alacala’s watch as agriculture secretary could become “a net exporter” of rice by 2013—a huge leap from being an importer of the staple food when his administration came to power in 2010.

“There’s a good chance, when Secretary Alcala speaks, a much better result is within our reach very soon. Consider this. Next year we can already become a net exporter of rice if—this is a big if—the weather would cooperate,” Aquino said.

“You know 23 storms pay us a courtesy call and if they arrive during harvest, the efforts of Alcala would go to waste. So let’s include in our prayers that if it’s possible the storms would set their appointments after the harvest when we need to have water in our farms,” he added.

Even when Alcala made a minor mistake like when he introduced  Aquino before his speech Monday, the President had good words for the agriculture secretary.

“It appears that Prosy (Alcala’s nickname) forgot my name. I would have had him replaced but he does a good job. So we can’t replace him,” the President said.

Presumed senatorial

In past speaking engagements, Aquino identified the administration’s presumed senatorial candidates for the 2013 midterm elections by citing what they had so far achieved in their respective fields.

They include Joel Villanueva, head of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, and Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara, one of the spokespersons of the House prosecution panel in the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona.

At a news conference Monday, Alcala said the government wanted to end the costly rice-importation program next year and start exporting rice by 2014.

Dairy, fish

By the time Aquino steps down in 2016, the country should produce enough meat, dairy or fish, Alcala said. These are foodstuffs that the country still imports in huge quantities, he said.

Building the cattle industry and making the country produce enough milk is a tall order, Alcala said.

The Philippines imports 99 percent of its milk requirements, according to the National Dairy Authority.

Of the three agriculture sub-sectors fisheries is the easiest to turn around, he said.

Alcala noted that the imposition of a closed season on sardine fishing in the waters off the Zamboanga Peninsula had helped to increase the sardine population in those waters.

Ban lifted

The ban was lifted recently, and now, according to Alcala, fishers bring home bigger catches.

Encouraged by those results, the Department of Agriculture is looking at temporary closures in other depleted fishing grounds, Alcala said.

The department is also negotiating with its counterparts in Papua New Guinea to allow tuna caught in Papuan seas to be processed in the Philippines. In exchange, the Philippines will export certain vegetables to Papua New Guinea and teach rice farming to Papuans.

The fisheries sector, which saw a 4-percent contraction in production last year, is on its way to recovery, Alcala said. Helping it to recover is the reopening of the Pacific high seas to Philippine tuna fishers, he said.

Irrigation

Aside from improving the supply of staples and other foods, Alcala said he would also continue to expand public works for agriculture.

The Department of Agriculture will build more irrigation and post-harvest facilities to increase farm yields, he said.

“We will never stop with irrigation,” he said. “And if we don’t have post-harvest facilities, we can only dream of self-sufficiency,” he said.