Keynote Address
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
During the World Food Day

Delivered at Ceremonial Hall, Malacañang, October 15, 1993]

Toward tomorrow’s
harvest of plenty

TODAY, we mark the 13th World Food Day and the 48th year of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Recognizing FAO’s dynamic leadership in assuring every nation—and every human being—equitable access to food, the Philippines joins the international community in renewing its commitment to world food security.

Aimed at strengthening world unity in confronting the world’s urgent food problems, the first World Food Day marked the world’s renewed determination to wipe out hunger and poverty from the face of the earth.

More than a decade has passed, but the struggle is far from over.

While pursuing the elimination of poverty, hunger and disease, we discover the remaining resources on which we pin our hopes to win the battle are also seriously threatened.

Neglecting biodiversity

Population growth, industrialization, poverty and hunger, apathy and neglect are depleting our land and water resources, and robbing mankind of its chances for survival.

One vital resource under grave threat, which we have often neglected in the past, is the variety of life systems that exist on earth, which we call “biological diversity.”

Nature’s diversity—plants, animals and the ecological system of which they are part—represents a global resource on which all countries and all regions depend.

It provides the raw materials—which in this case is the combination of genes—from which we build the plant varieties and animal breeds we raise for food, clothing, medicines, shelter and survival.

Unfortunately, as the FAO has noted, we are losing nature’s biodiversity at an unprecedented rate.

We lose it when we deplete, degrade and destroy our forest, our seas, our rivers, which are the natural habitats of countless wild plant and animal species.

We lose it when we opt for “high-tech” agriculture that replaces traditional crop varieties and ancient animal breeds with high-yielding monocrops.

An inadvertent “crime”

Indeed the magnitude of environmental degradation in our country has severely affected our ability to sustain the earth’s resources and their productivity.

Each year agriculture loses one billion cubic meters of precious topsoil to erosion. Hundreds of millions of pesos’ worth of crops is lost each year to flooding.

These are the grave consequences of overlogging, which has shrunk our forest area to just one-fifteenth of its original size.

A mere 7 percent remains of our original forest cover, bringing about precipitation extremes such as droughts and violent monsoons.

Likewise, our marine resources are being fast depleted and destroyed. Illegal fishing methods have ruined 70 percent of our coral reefs, and deforestation and fishpond conversion have reduced mangroves to one-third of what was there in 1918.

In addition, most of the country’s municipal fishing grounds are in danger of being overfished. Moreover, 50 of our more than 400 major rivers are heavily polluted, with ten virtually dead—as erosion, mine tailings, and residential and industrial waste take their toll.

It is easy to put the blame on one group of villains alone: the illegal loggers, the manipulative policy-makers, the pollutive industries, the bribe-taking law enforcers.

Yet, most of the time, the abuse and destruction of the environment and biodiversity are actually unintended and a direct consequence of man’s inherent passion for growth and expansion.

Much of the ecological damage, for example, is brought about by the heavy burden that our fast-growing population imposes on the environment.

More people means having more mouths to feed, more bodies to clothe, more heads to shelter, and more garbage to dispose of. Rapid population growth—a Philippine and Third World phenomenon for the last forty years—drains natural resources and strains the environment’s ability to renew itself.

A vicious circle at work

A deeper analysis of the ecological and biodiversity problem will, therefore, show that a vicious circle is at work here. Poverty compels people to destroy their environment.

The destruction of the environment, on the other hand, pushes people into the deeper mires of poverty and greater destructiveness.

Obviously, the issues of biodiversity and environmental degradation cannot be sufficiently addressed without addressing poverty.

This makes Government’s task extremely difficult. We cannot punish many of our environmental offenders just for being poor and desperate. This would be an affront to justice and humanity.

For those who greedily plunder our natural resources for personal gain, we must set in place draconian measures to end their operations. We must punish them severely.

Yet, for the most part, environmental protection and enforcement must be pursued with an eye to rehabilitating its poorer offenders.

Our ecological imperatives

Toward this end, several ecological imperatives have begun to emerge. To address the problem of rapid population growth, we must have a comprehensive and effective family-planning program.

We must reverse the denudation of our forests by banning indiscriminate commercial logging; by promoting socialized forestry; and by embarking on a massive reforestation program.

We must provide alternative livelihood opportunities for the small offenders displaced from their ecologically unsound activities.

Above all, we must educate our countrymen into doing their share to protect and preserve the environment.

The agricultural sector’s role in environmental protection, and in the preservation of biodiversity, in particular, is crucial.

The FAO has pinpointed as one of the culprits modern man’s propensity to cultivate only a few high-yielding plant and livestock species on a large-scale basis, thus threatening traditional crop and livestock varieties.

Over large tracts of land, the traditional diversity of crop varieties has been replaced by monocultures of high-yielding ones requiring irrigation and intense applications of pesticides and fertilizers. The trouble is, the genetic uniformity of a crop planted season after season only invites epidemics.

Similarly, the high-level application of fertilizers, insecticides and other chemicals destroys the inherent physical, chemical and microbiological properties of the soil, as well as the flora, fauna and other life forms of the whole ecosystem.

Obviously, we have to review our agricultural policies in the context of what is called “sustainable agriculture.”

Given our present parameters, food production must be substantially accelerated to keep pace with population growth.

But since the edges of horizontal expansion have been reached by many countries, including the Philippines, the thrust of our efforts has been to intensify agricultural production, meaning we try to harvest more from less land.

We now realize, however, that this must be done within ecological or sustainable limits. High-input agriculture is generally very productive, but it uses large amounts of chemicals that tend to produce sustained on-site and off-site environmental degradation.

I am convinced that we are all agreed that high-input agriculture should be modified by alternative technologies and practices that assure long-term sustainability without sacrificing productivity gains. Sustainable agriculture is our goal and challenge.

Our Government’s key production area approach, designed by Agriculture Secretary Roberto Sebastian, is firmly premised on “agricultural sustainability.” Indeed, our medium-term plan for agriculture serves as a viable model of “agricultural modernization” that is not contrapuntal to, but is instead premised on, “sustainability.”

New technologies for environmental enhancement

Foremost among the supporting technologies adopted in this program is the integrated pest management, or IPM. With IPM farmers learn to use “the best mix of pest control for a particular field in a particular season.”

Another sustainability-boosting measure is composting, which makes use of available organic materials as a supplement or substitute for industrial fertilizers.

For upland farming, sloping agricultural land technology uses such methods as intercropping to conserve and enrich soils, and to enhance farm productivity through efficient crop management.

In this integrated system, trees improve soil fertility by preventing soil erosion and adding nitrogen and nutrients that are ordinarily inaccessible to crops.

At present, coconut, coffee, cacao, citrus and other fruit trees are being successfully intercropped with food crops. We see this as a profitable way to speed up the nutrient cycle, as well as to optimize land use by layering production.

The P5.0-billion fisheries sector program has several major components that promote such ecological remedies as ecosystem rehabilitation, resource management and conservation, and law enforcement.

The reforestation of mangrove areas is a priority, with an initial target of 2,500 hectares in Calauag Bay, Carigara Bay, Pangil Bay and nine other bay areas.

The program strives to establish fish sanctuaries and endangered fishery zones, and to expand the Department of Agriculture’s artificial-reef program.

Involving the citizenry

Of course, the measures I enumerated would not even take off without the involvement of a concerned citizenry. The best efforts of Government—or, for that matter, of any citizens’ groups—have no impact on ecological concerns if these are done unilaterally.

Our efforts must be concerted, and each must do his share.

I therefore commend all the groups, agencies and individuals that continue to seek ways to address the urgent need to increase food production and incomes, and eliminate hunger and poverty in the world without jeopardizing the forest, the plains, the seas, the air and the million and one life forms that they sustain.

If we earnestly intend to preserve the earth, if we wish to earn the gratitude of our children, then we must change our ways; we must unlearn our selfish ways of doing things. Instead, we must learn to recapture our forefathers’ spirit of solidarity with nature.

Only in this way can we face the future—indeed, this coming century—with a clear conscience and even richer grounds beneath our feet for growth.

If we are to attain our vision of “Philippines 2000,” it must be on the basis of the expenditure of our best and brightest efforts, and not at the expense of helpless nature.

The wisdom of thousands of years of human civilization has not changed: the best way to fight hunger is still to keep the soil and the seas alive.

Join me in this effort, and help me plant the seeds for tomorrow’s harvest of plenty.