In the video, “Good governance is addressing our most fundamental basic needs,” Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan emphasizes the critical importance of food security and the role of good governance in addressing this fundamental need. He highlights the high prices of food and inflation as the primary concerns of the people in the Philippines, with up to 70% of the income of the poorest going towards food. This underscores the urgent need to address food security, ensuring access to affordable, nutritious food for all.
Pangilinan delves into the factors contributing to food insecurity, such as the high prices of food items and the alarming poverty rates among farmers and fisherfolk. He also addresses the issue of corruption within the agriculture sector, emphasizing the need for good governance to combat corruption and misgovernance, which directly impact food security.
Drawing on his experience as the former Secretary of Food Security, Pangilinan shares success stories of combating corruption and ensuring transparency in food supply management. He stresses the necessity of government policies and investments in agriculture to address the challenges of food security.
Pangilinan concludes by urging the younger generation to take on the challenge of addressing food security and advocating for good governance. He emphasizes that with the right policies and investments, the Philippines can overcome the challenges of food security. This video serves as a powerful call to action to prioritize good governance in addressing the fundamental basic need of food security.
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Author Video Description
Why are Filipino farmers continuing to be poor? Unless we secure our farmers and our fisherfolk, we cannot secure our economy. And we can only do that if the productivity and incomes of our farmers and our fisher food, our food producers go up. And so good governance is ensuring that we put the right policies in place to address a most fundamental basic need: the right and access to affordable food. A highly accomplished lawyer, dedicated politician, and a successful farm owner, Former Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan has been a vital figure in shaping the political and agricultural landscape of the Philippines.
Educated at the prestigious University of the Philippines College of Law and the Harvard Kennedy School, he brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to his endeavors.
In addition to his roles in the Senate, he also served as the Presidential Assistant for Food Security and Agricultural Modernization to President Benigno Aquino III from 2014 to 2015, demonstrating his deep commitment to improving food security and advancing agricultural modernization in the Philippines. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
High prices of food actually and inflation is the number one concern of our kababayans of our countrymen today uh if we are to uh view the results of uh polling uh from thews pulse Asia uh number onec up to 70% of uh the income of our poorest go to food so you can
Imagine as we would call it uh uh and the suffering food security is basic uh food is fundamental uh and uh the country or any society must address food security must and food security is basically uh uh access to Affordable food uh um access to uh affordable and uh um nutritious food
Healthy uh food um uh too big uh it is a direct bearing on obviously the quality of life uh and yet uh over a million households families uh are um impoverished and experience uh hunger uh 30% of our children ages 0 to 6 uh are suffering from varying degrees of
Stunting due to poor nutrition um uh the food prices in the Philippines are so high relative to our Asian neighbors uh pork uh the price of pork in Thailand in Vietnam is uh a third or one half uh the price of our uh pork here in the Country
Chicken and why is this so uh what makes us food food insecure Food items agriculture products half the country’s population is in the rural areas and the main source of livelihood actually is U agriculture and fishing and yet when the data is uh uh examined 31% of our Farmers live in abject poverty and 31 30% of our Fisher folk live below the
Poverty line uh more than double uh actually um uh or h d rather in the national average uh and this really must be addressed this is not um a laughing matter uh we are actually producing a generation of stunted uh uh Philipp inos uh whose capacity to learn and uh
Brain and uh development is adversely affected by poor nutrition gainfully employed so that has to be addressed food security actually is intimately related with good governance uh before phally many of you are probably familiar a phally scandal you response overpriced TS overpriced masks uh and so many other anomalies but
Before faral the biggest corruption scandals were actually in the agriculture sector uh some of you probably are uh aware or know of uh you Napo scam that’s about 10 billion p worth of AG budget allocations uh farmers and Fisher folk organizations um another Scandal uh corruption fertilizer SC fertilizer coruption swine SC
Liv so the biggest scandals actually uh were in the agriculture sector uh it’s also no joke overpriced Department of Agriculture Bureau of Customs uh so corruption and um misgovernance has a direct bearing on our food security back at 7 s VA um government who are supposed to be uh
Government officials who are supposed to be championing the cause of the farmers uh instead of doing that they look the other way because the Traders the Smugglers the uh the rice cartel if you can call it that um and that’s why good governance is important and uh and not just in words
But in Deeds no when I was food security secretary for example um and chairman of the board of the national food Authority um we actually went after um these uh uh uh uh Traders and Smugglers ilal smuggled rice as well as uh uh diverted NFA rise uh we filed cases against NFA
Personnel in cahoots with these Traders we filed cases against these Traders uh and uh we managed the country’s rise Supply we stopped corruption for the first time in the 42e history of NFA for example we rejected the bids of Thailand and Vietnam for being overpriced
Press uh four times we did it in a period of one year and four times after rejecting them based on our rules they were allowed to submit a second offer uh if they wanted to and they did and every time they submitted the second offer uh the second offer was uh uh
Lower than the first one and because of that we stood our ground and said that we are going to buy it at this price uh and they agreed we were able to save 7 billion uh uh government funds no uh apart from this of course is it was an open and transparent uh
Processs and uh we the result we were able to reduce rise prices in um um self-sufficient areas uh but overall from 15% rise inflation in 2014 June it went down to 8% rise inflation Nationwide but in some areas it rice prices actually went down by two almost
3 pesos per kilo um and we did that because of good governance in that sense divers C criminal investigation division group PNP and head he was still uh a enlisted active official of the PNP was uh Benjamin magalong uh I know nonsense mayor today of B City but then yeah
We insist so it’s really good governance no uh why are our Farmers continueing to be poor uh continue to be poor rather uh unless you secure our farmers and our Fisher fol we must secure uh we cannot secure our food uh and so good governance is ensuring that we put the right policies
In place to address a most fundamental basic need the right and access to Affordable food and uh we can only do that if the productivity and incomes of our farmers and our Fisher folk uh our food producers uh uh go up no um you know uh agure Thailand is spending double uh
What the Philippines is spending for agriculture the government uh Vietnam is spending triple uh uh and both countries Vietnam and Thailand have less than have a less mouths to feed we have than than the Philippines Thailand has about 70 million population uh Vietnam is about 90 million population and we are 113 117
Million uh many more Millions more mouth to feeds and yet we’re not uh government is not spending uh as much uh compared to Vietnam and Thailand so it’s really a challenge government policy good governance includes the right policies and we really have to invest in agriculture we are not investing
Enough uh and proof of this uh let me just check my it’s over here um the data for 2022 no just to give you uh you know the idea of how far behind we are in agriculture Investments uh uh um the Philippines exported 7 billion pesos worth dollars sorry $7 billion do worth
Of Agri products last year 20227 billion plus plus Indonesia exported 51 billion dollars worth of agre exports Thailand 42 billion Malaysia 33 billion Vietnam 23 billion dollar Singapore which does not even have land $4 billion worth of Agri exports uh they traded that7 billion um we’re not spending enough for
Agriculture we’re not investing enough at the little that we are investing so good governance is important we can bring down make sure that every every PES counts in our investments in agriculture and if they see that government is serious in investing in agriculture the private sector will
Follow uh but if they see that the government is not serious uh is not spending enough is not investing enough why will the private sector invest uh in agriculture so uh these are the challenges of good governance um and mind you irony Vietnam Thailand College of Forestry College of
Agriculture but your generation of young U Filipinos must take on the culs I will end with this you know other countries surpass we’re able to address the challenges of food security there’s no reason why we cannot and that’s why good governance is critical we can overcome the challenges
Of food security and good governance in the country but we have to make a stand and be involved um and
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Video “Good governance is addressing our most fundamental basic needs | Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan | TEDxUPV” was uploaded on 01/12/2024 to Youtube Channel TEDx Talks