A joint cooperation framework on agriculture agreed by Japan and the Philippines during President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s visit to Japan could address various agricultural issues in the country such as logistics and food value chain, an official of the Department of Agriculture (DA) said.

During a media forum in Quezon City on Saturday, Agriculture Undersecretary Zam Ampatuan said the joint cooperation framework must be defined clearly to determine areas that should be improved in the country’s agricultural sector.

“We needed intervention in the logistics. Let’s say for instance the issue of these spices that suddenly the prices got up – because we lack logistics, we lack cold storages but more than that the more important thing is the enterprise system for which this facility should be managed,” Ampatuan said.

“’Yun po kasi iyung kulang – ‘yung platform na sustainable kasi mahirap po dito sa atin, nangyari na ito noong mga nauna – iyung intervention ng gobyerno sa agriculture ay hindi sustainable dahil namimigay tayo nang hindi klaro kung ano’ng pagpapatakbo – it should be run as a business,” the DA undersecretary pointed out.

For instance, Japan, the DA official said, can assist the Philippines to develop its logistics system with the government, for its part, working on a more sustainable enterprise system for Filipino farmers.

At this point, the intervention is to put up a system and then the structures for those systems to work, Ampatuan said, adding Japan and the Philippines can work on investing in logistics to pull the production towards the market.

“The government has to be more aggressive in this because the private sector is not as ready to invest in agriculture. As you would know, private investors are interested [in] export-oriented agriculture – putting up banana plantation, pineapple plantation, palm oil,” Undersecretary Ampatuan said.

According to Ampatuan, the efficiency of the country’s food value chain is important and the challenges that the government has to address include organizing the farmers, putting together small farms into large farms, and consolidating agricultural marketing.

The Philippine agriculture needed intervention in terms of mechanization, which is an important feature of the Rice Tariffication Law to improve agricultural production, Ampatuan said, noting Marcos’ current Japan visit will hopefully address those issues in the short-term. Presidential News Desk