Govt urged to shift agriculture strategy

AGRICULTURE industry group Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (Sinag) challenged the government to provide a thorough assessment for the Philippines’ accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), reiterating its grave concerns over the country’s involvement to another treaty, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Recently, about 50 organizations of farmers, fishers, workers, civil society and businesses unanimously opposed the ratification of the RCEP trade agreement, claiming that it was finalized without consulting agri-fisheries stakeholders, who are directly affected by it. One of these groups included Sinag.

In a statement on Friday, Jayson

Cainglet, Sinag executive director, discussed the yearly end-results of the Philippines’ accession to the WTO for the last 27 years.

He noted that proponents of the WTO projected for the Philippines an increase in annual agricultural export earnings by at least P3.4 billion, an increase in the annual gross value added of agriculture by P60 billion and creation of an additional 500,000 jobs annually. The WTO also aimed to achieve balance of trade in agricultural products. However, Cainglet lamented that these things did not happen 27 years after.

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that the country’s agriculture trade was declining on an annual basis for the last decades. Similarly, the labor force proportion of employed persons in agriculture sustained a decrease reaching 22.9 percent in 2019 from 24.3 percent in 2018 and 25.4 percent in 2017.

Making it worse, the share of the agriculture sector to country’s gross domestic product (GDP) plunged from 20.89 percent in 1997, the beginning of the Philippines’ WTO accession, to just 10.18 percent in 2020.

“27 years after, why was there such a contrast between the rosy predictions and the dismal outcomes? 27 years into the WTO, there is no promised remarkable growth under a liberalized trading regime. The purported gains in trade, production output and employment never happened,” Cainglet said.

He further said: “The WTO has made our country into a net food importing country, destroying our decades-old capacity to produce our own food. The WTO has undermined our food security, much more our food sovereignty where we decide our own agriculture and food policy.” According to him, the promised market access for developing countries like the Philippines “never” materialized, claiming that the WTO was intended to expand the market opportunities for the big players such as the United States and European Union, and lately China and the other members of the Group of Eight (G8).

“While these experts got away with their huge paychecks, the agriculture sector suffered. And now, here they are again,” Cainglet said, reiterating Sinag’s strong opposition to the RCEP’s ratification.

Instead of pushing for RCEP, Sinag is demanding the government to pursue a permanent shift in the agriculture strategy for a sustainable and much localized food production to meet staple food demands, thus ensuring that more food is grown where it is needed.

“No country has ever developed, without first developing its agriculture sector to produce staples and the necessary raw materials, beyond what the country needs,” Cainglet said.