MORE ARGUMENTS FOR A FOOD CZAR

In a prior article, I proposed the appointment of a food czar who should have cabinet rank, and who will perform a staff function that is reporting directly to the President, but will have a collegial relationship with the other cabinet members who are performing food related line functions. As it is now, many food-related functions within the government bureaucracy are fragmented, meaning that they are spread out all over and more often than not, they are also overlapping with each other. In political science, we refer to that as being “balkanized”, meaning that it is broken up into many parts. Mr. Rene Pamintuan, an agribusiness entrepreneur says that we could see this fragmentation in terms of the DTI being on top of food manufacturing, the DOH being on top of food licensing through the FDA, the DOST being on top of providing some machineries through the PHILMECH, and the CHED being on top of agriculture education through the SCUs. Mr. Pamintuan says that most ASEAN countries that are beating us today in food production and food exportation have unified government agencies that are on top of the entire food supply chain, from planting to marketing, so to speak. He adds that if we could implement curriculum changes in agriculture education, nothing much could change. Imagine combining the curriculums of UP Diliman and UP Los Banos. That could be a good start to produce more agripreneurs. IKE SENERES/1-7-24