Duterte orders soldier-farmers deployed to help in Marawi rehab

Soldiers who stared death in the face in the war on the Islamic State in Marawi City would have to give life to the concept of turning swords into plowshares under an order by President Rodrigo Duterte creating a so-called Army agricultural engineering company.

According to Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol, the order would require soldiers with skills in operating farm machines to stay put in Marawi and revive the city’s agriculture or what’s left of it as members of the new company.

The soldiers-turned-agricultural engineers would help Marawi’s fishermen and farmers get back on their feet.

They would operate tractors, planters, harvesters, threshers and other farm machines while the Department of Agriculture (DA) would provide seeds and other farming inputs, according to Piñol in a Facebook post.

Piñol, still in his FB post, quoted Mr. Duterte as saying at a briefing last week for Piñol and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana in Biliran that letting soldiers operate farm machines in Marawi would prevent a repeat of “irregularities in the past” when farm equipment and inputs for farmers “ended up in the hands of local politicians who used these tools for personal benefits.”

“Stop that practice,” Piñol quoted Mr. Duterte as telling him and Lorenzana at the briefing. “Fix the way government helps so that it will be the people who will benefit,” the President said, according to Pinol.

The DA and Department of Defense (DND) would be the lead agencies in implementing Mr. Duterte’s order to form the agricultural engineering company of soldiers. The DA would provide the resources while the DND would tap qualified soldiers.

The agricultural engineering company would be in charge of machinery safekeeping. Local government officials, who would need the machines, would have to deal directly with the Army.

“The tractors will plow the fields for free while the DA will provide additional assistance such as white corn seeds, rice seeds and farm inputs,” Pinol said in his FB post.

“The strategy is expected to hasten the agricultural recovery of the area,” he said.

The DA on Wednesday turned over a first batch of tractors to the DND for agriculture operations in Marawi and expects to provide by the first quarter of 2018 all farm equipment that the Army agricultural engineers would need.