FAO grants RP $3.48M for agri modernization

The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had given the Philippines grants totaling $3.48 million from 1999 to 2003 to strengthen the country’s agricultural sector.

Philippe J. Lhuillier, Philippine Ambassador to Italy and Permanent Representative to FAO in the past five years, said the United Nations agency has been fully supportive of the Philippine government’s efforts to strengthen the country’s food security by modernizing the agricultural sector.

Lhuillier said making agriculture a stronger pillar of the economy can generate jobs particularly in the countryside, produce enough to make food available to everybody, and export to generate foreign exchange.

He said a FAO study found out that hunger worldwide is made worse not by lack of food but by a person’s lack of money to buy food. He said agricultural jobs would give rural folks money and an abundant produce would bring down prices.

"It has been my focus as FAO representative to achieve these. The grants we have obtained might seem small but they are a strategic push forward as we try to regain the old glory of our agricultural sector," he said.

He said the Philippines was elected to the FAO Council twice, from 2001 to 2003 and from 2003 to 2005.

The government spent P24.21 billion for agriculture and fisheries modernization in 2001 and P24.36 billion in 2002 and allocated P33 billion last year.

Among the government’s programs lauded by the FAO were the improvement of farm irrigation systems, distribution of post-harvest machinery and the construction of farming facilities, the improvement of farm- to- market roads and fish ports and the use of hybrid rice.