EDITORIAL - Boosting food security

With the end of the one-year prohibition on the hiring of losers in the midterm elections, President Aquino has recruited Francis Pangilinan as his adviser on food security and agricultural modernization.

The former senator won’t be a one-peso-a-year presidential adviser with a privileged business card. He will serve as the country’s so-called food security czar, after the President took away from the Department of Agriculture four of its key agencies – the National Food Authority, National Irrigation Administration, Philippine Coconut Authority, and Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority – and made Pangilinan their overseer.

Pangilinan will report directly to the President, who last year had bragged that the country would become an exporter of rice for the first time in 2014. With the country now preparing to import thousands of metric tons of rice from Vietnam, the promise obviously won’t be fulfilled.

Palace officials have brushed aside observations that Pangilinan’s appointment emasculated Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala, who has been hounded by rumors that he is on his way out. Malacañang has pointed out that Alcala would still have more than 50 attached agencies under his department. Alcala said he welcomed Pangilinan’s appointment.

The public generally shrugs off Cabinet intramurals, except when overlapping roles lead to inefficient service. In the agriculture sector, the government is expected to provide irrigation, fertilizer and pesticide assistance to farmers. Also needed are farm-to-market roads, marketing assistance and access to post-harvest facilities. Aquaculture and the fisheries sector can also use a boost.

The country is blessed with rich natural resources and high biodiversity but lags behind several of its Southeast Asian neighbors in agricultural and fisheries production. Becoming a rice exporter remains a dream. Limited resources and inefficiency have been blamed for this, but scandals in the past years indicate that corruption and smuggling also played a major role.

Pangilinan’s appointment has been criticized as political accommodation and another indication of the President’s reluctance to tell members of his official family that they no longer enjoy his confidence. This appointment should not turn out to be like that of Panfilo Lacson, who has lamented that his job as post-typhoon rehabilitation czar has been held back by two Cabinet members.

This should not happen in the case of Pangilinan, whose job should enhance rather than clash with that of the agriculture secretary. They are expected to work together in cleaning up the agriculture sector and boosting the nation’s food security.