Latest in Food SecurityThe Philippines’ chronic failure to solve its geographic fragmentation has produced one of the most absurd realities in Philippine agriculture: it costs more to ship bananas from Mindanao to Metro Manila than to export them to Japan and China, former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel “Manny” Piñol…
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. still has two years to act on the most urgent threat facing Philippine agriculture: the flood of imported food that is wiping out local farmers one sector at a time. This was the assessment of former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel “Manny” Piñol, who stressed that the…
The Philippines can produce enough food to feed its entire population, but the real crisis is that tomatoes rot in Cavite while sardine makers in Zamboanga import tomato paste from China, and fish pile up unsold in Tawi-Tawi while the same island lacks vegetables and chicken. This is because no…
The Philippine hog industry is collapsing under the weight of imported pork from Brazil flooding the local market, with live hog prices crashing from over ₱200 per kilo to ₱110-130, and former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel “Manny” Piñol is warning that when hog raisers quit, the corn farmers who…
The government’s approach of giving farmers cash assistance and handouts as its primary agricultural intervention is wrong, counterproductive, and breeds dependence rather than productivity, former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel “Manny” Piñol said Wednesday. The former Agriculture chief made the…
Former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel “Manny” Piñol is promoting two unlikely food crops as the future of Philippine food security—wagyu beef cattle, which he says can be raised profitably even in backyard farms, and breadfruit, a native tree that provides food for generations from a single…
The Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) did not bring down rice prices as promised, former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel “Manny” Piñol said Wednesday. In fact, Piñol said it drove them higher, while simultaneously killing the livelihoods of Filipino rice farmers by surrendering the country’s rice…
The Philippines is on a path toward becoming a failed state in terms of food security if it continues to rely on importation rather than boosting local food production, former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel “Manny” Piñol warned Wednesday. Piñol made the statement in an interview on DZRH News…
The number of Kadiwa centers nationwide has grown from 140 to 170 sites to 800 fully operational locations, Agriculture Secretary Francisco “Kiko” Tiu Laurel said Saturday. Tiu Laurel made the disclosure in an interview on DZRH News program Special on Saturday on July 18, as part of the DZRH SONA…
The incoming Super El Niño poses a bigger threat to Philippine agriculture than the recently eased Iran conflict, Senate President Win Gatchalian warned Saturday, noting that several provinces have already declared a state of calamity due to severe drought conditions. Gatchalian raised the alarm…
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz dealt a “double whammy” to Filipino farmers, driving up fertilizer prices on top of already elevated costs from the broader Iran conflict, Senate President Win Gatchalian said Saturday, warning that the agriculture sector has borne a disproportionate share of…
Rising nighttime temperatures — not daytime heat — are emerging as the more critical factor affecting rice productivity in the Philippines, a Filipino climate scientist said Saturday, citing research from the International Rice Research Institute that has gone largely undiscussed despite the…
The National Irrigation Administration (NIA) has no power to stop the conversion of irrigated farmlands to commercial or industrial use, its administrator admitted Saturday, as both he and a former senator flagged the long-running absence of a National Land Use Plan as a critical gap undermining…
The National Irrigation Administration is deploying a multi-pronged strategy to cushion the impact of El Niño on irrigated farmlands, combining cropping calendar adjustments, solar pump installations, desilting operations, and brush dam construction under a short, medium, and long-term adaptation…
Several large irrigation dam projects that had been stalled for years or decades under previous administrations are now fully funded and under active construction, the National Irrigation Administration chief said Saturday, crediting President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for treating food security as a…
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