Duterte sees food supply shortage in 10 years

DAVAO City—Vice mayor Rodrigo Duterte warned of a food supply problem in 10 to 12 years if current trends toward cash crop production continue to ease out food production in Southern Mindanao.

Duterte, who compared the city to Bacolod City in Negros Occidental, said Davao is enjoying a robust economy because of its burgeoning middle class, but he warned that although the region has been making money in cash crop production for export, the food supply would be threatened in the long run once farmers stop producing food in favor of cash crops.

“Once farmers stop producing food crops to cash in on cash crops, we will have problem later on,” Duterte said during the Gikan sa masa, para sa masa television program Sunday.

Aside from crop conversion, there have also been a lot of land use conversions—with farm lands being sold for housing projects and condominium.

Duterte said investors had pointed at the rising middle class in the city to explain the robust investments in property development projects, particularly the increasing number of new high rise condominiums.

“I had asked them, where would you find people to buy them?” he said he had asked Filinvest, who has set up a condominium building near Ecoland’s SM City mall but is now planning to put up another condominium building in the north.

“They said Davao’s middle class is growing fast,” he said.

Among the high-rise projects soon to rise in Davao, a 33-storey building of Aeon Towers Davao will be put up beside the Abreeza mall while Camella Homes is also putting up another 10-storey condominium in the northern side of Davao.—Germelina Lacorte, Inquirer Mindanao