IT’S heartening to read reports about two giant business organizations engaging in agricultural production amid the food crisis affecting all countries of the world today.

San Miguel Corp. and the Hong Kong-based Kuok Group of Companies, two of Southeast Asia’s biggest food companies, have just launched a P1-billion joint project to cultivate 1 million hectares of suitable land for the production of grains, sugar and other basic staples, or for livestock and poultry production.

The San Miguel-Kuok initiative, dubbed “Feeding Our Future,” reflects the concept and rationale of corporate charity, known as corporate social responsibility in improving the lives of people in the community where companies operate.

A good feature of the project is that it will not entail any government financing. The involvement of government agencies like the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Armed Forces of the Philippines, National Commission on Indigenous Peoples and National Power Corp. is in identifying up to 1 million hectares of land. San Miguel and Kuok will provide $1,000 per hectare for cultivation. They are also committing to buy all of the crops at harvest time.

I hope other big corporations will follow the San Miguel-Kuok initiative to increase the country’s food production in the face of the global food shortage and high prices of food commodities.

In the past, the business sector had also gone into corporate farming to produce, at least, the food requirements of their respective employees.

Actually, corporate farming is one of the issues I want to include in the formulation of a grand strategy for the renaissance of agriculture. Even before the worldwide food crisis occurred, I already had the opportunity of improving our agriculture sector by turning idle lands, like the huge Liguasan Marsh in Mindanao, into food-producing areas.

Unfortunately, corporate farming still suffers a degree of stigma because of the misconception that it is antifarmer, that big agricultural producers are villains that deprive small tillers of their livelihood.

However, I believe we can establish a system of integrating corporate farming into our agriculture sector without displacing farmers. The San Miguel-Kuok project, for instance, will be in partnership with existing tenants in areas identified by the government.

In other forms of corporate farming, businesses may forge agreements with individual farmers or farmers’ cooperatives to produce rice, which will be purchased by businesses for their employees. Thus, farmers are assured of buyers even before they start planting rice.

Of course, corporate farming need not be limited to producing food to cope with the current high prices and shortages. Corporate farms should also look at other high-value crops to take advantage of high prices and big demand in the world markets. For instance, why do we have to import flowers from as far as Europe to fill the demands of the tourism industry? I am sure we can grow all the flowers that local hotels and restaurants need.

It’s not an empty boast that Philippine mangoes are among the best in the world compared with those in California, which, I think, is imported from South America. The Guinness Book of Records in 2004 listed mangoes known as “Sweet Elena” and produced from trees in a farm in Santa Cruz, Zambales, as the sweetest in the world. And in the Ilocos region, where mango is called the “Ilocos Gold,” they say it’s sweeter still.

We may have to hold a competition to find out which is the best, but regardless of the outcome, the best mango still comes from the Philippines. The current food crisis is an opportunity for us to turn our mango pride into real gold through exports.

Yes, we have a problem with high prices and lack of supplies with respect to rice and other food items. Surveys show many Filipino households missing meals. The queues to buy subsidized rice remain long, and even families in rice-producing provinces complain of high rice prices. Many developing countries have the same problem.

Still, I see in the current crisis an opportunity to develop our country’s potential in agriculture.

Let’s not forget, we are an agricultural country. We have an opportunity to cultivate millions of hectares of idle land, including logged-over areas, and turn these into food factories to guarantee that no Filipino will ever go hungry, and also into economic drivers that will provide better incomes for farmers, raise the purchasing power of rural communities and generate foreign exchange for our reserves.

One Response to “Corporate farming: Part of agricultural renaissance”

• 1
  Mike
  July 21st, 2008 22:35

  I am really impressed with your thoughts Senator. Keep it up.

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