KA MON: Congratulations, Mr. President. You now have the right strategy. which is to increase production. Finally, you listened to suggestions including mine to go ballistic in making our farmers use BIOFERTILIZERS. But please include soil conditioners. More so when you announced in detail that you will get into cyclical (the proper term Sir is "seasonal") cropping pattern. KUDOS to you and your DA team. BUT THIS IS NOT ENOUGH?
PBBM. Oh. I am told that this is enough.
KA MON: The strategy is good which is to increase production. The BBC Futuristic Study says " for industry to survive, agriculture must first be revived otherwise the country will go extinct" like the Maya Empire. However, in having more production you must intervene in the factors of production (NOT HYBRID SEEDS) and these are Land, Labor, Capital and Entrepreneurship. Nowhere does it say that just by changing the variety FROM.CERTIFIED SEEDS TO HYBRID SEEDS planted in irrigated areas of say 1.5 million hectares you can increase production. Maybe PRODUCTIVITY BUT NOT PRODUCTION to substitute importation. This is tactical error on your part. It will only make a company richer and our farmers disgruntled. After all it is the farmers’ investment that is at stake here especially his labor as an implicit cost. It is just like whipping a horse in Vigan that is already dead- tired of bringing tourist around and could hardly lift his legs.
Mr. PRESIDENT what do you think of our farmers? They are not stupid that if you give them hybrid seeds they will buy more fertilizer and produce for you to make our country self-sufficient in rice.
PBBM: Oh, I did not realize that. What then must I do?
KA MON: Simple, Sir. Let us irrigate their lands, then they will even borrow funds to produce with their labor. This time you must make them entrepreneurs with a government intervention of providing the tractor pools, post- harvest facilities that they will own and operate as an enterprise and let NFA buy all their produce to assure them of market and profitability.
Mr. SONNY AFRICA of IBON Foundation said that among the developing countries the Philippines has the least government intervention to capacitate them to be globally-competitive thus, debilitating our economy. You have the additional P 100 billion in your budget. You can irrigate an additional 100,000 hectares with this complete with post- harvest facilities. With three continuous cropping in the newly- irrigated areas, you can now substitute rice importation. Need I say more?