VICE President Maria Leonor “Leni” G. Robredo wants to double the budget of the agriculture sector and rework the distribution of the funding toward commodities with a huge potential to increase farmers’ income in the first year of her presidency.
Robredo disclosed this as part of her plans for the agriculture sector should she win the presidency in the 2022 elections.
Besides increasing the agriculture budget, she would also push for the redistribution of funds, and noted that bulk of the Department of Agriculture’s fund is allocated to rice production alone.
“In my first year we will increase the agriculture budget to 3.4 percent . And we will not just increase the total budget but also fix the distribution,” she said at a dialogue hosted by agriculture groups on Monday.
Robredo added: “P15.5 billion of the P58 billion budget is for rice, followed by P3 billion in fisheries. The rest would be about P1 billion each. Let us see if the distribution of the budget is justified—where are the opportunities? Which sectors are the most resilient?”
Robredo said she is partial to hiking the budget of other commodities with great income potential and opportunities despite the minuscule funding. She also pointed out that the government must increase the budget for climate-resilient crops since climate change is a pressing challenge for farmers today.
“For example, the budget for fisheries should be even higher since our sea is bigger than our land and considering that fisherfolk are among the poorest in the country,” she said.
Robredo also wants to institutionalize people’s participation in the budget and policy-making in agriculture.
The government must change its benchmarks or parameters in measuring the accomplishments of the government in the sector, Robredo said, adding that increasing farmers’ income and productivity must be the benchmark.
“We should change the way we set our parameters for accomplishments. The question will always be: what was the impact of our programs to the lives of the farmers?” she said.
“When we look at the data over the years the increase in farmers’ income was just 6 percent in 2019. For fisherfolks, it is even lower at 5.6 percent,” she added.
Image courtesy of Nonoy Lacza