Rightsizing should be done to better manage extension services for farmers and fishermen, and a way to do it is to merge the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Agrarian Reform, Senator Francis Pangilinan said Wednesday.
He made the proposal as the Senate began its plenary deliberations for the 2021 national budget.
“The manifestation earlier of Senator [Franklin] Drilon regarding the Department of Agrarian Reform that it has been over 40 years since its mandate of distributing land is still there,” Pangilinan said.
“On the other hand, the Department of Agriculture’s extension services are very weak. This is one observation as to why countries like Thailand or Malaysia are very strong on agriculture because of extension service. So a rightsizing approach would be to merge the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Agrarian Reform.”
Records show that the DAR has 8,383 filled positions out of 10,209 total permanent positions in the Office of the Secretary alone.
The DA, meanwhile, only has 9,093 out of 12,604 permanent positions filled. This number already includes their extension offices.
“Strengthen the extension service of the Department of Agrarian Reform or the Department of Agriculture and absorb the agrarian reform agency precisely because their mandate should have been completed at this point. That would be an example of rightsizing,” Pangilinan said.
He says rightsizing also involves the retraining and capacity-building of DAR personnel for delivery of extension services.
Senator Sonny Angara, who as head of the Senate committee on finance is a sponsor of the budget bill, agreed with Pangilinan’s proposal.
The Senate is expected to deliberate on the P4.5- trillion national budget until Nov. 18.
Despite the lockdowns that disrupted the food supply value chain, agriculture has been the saving grace for the national economy during the pandemic, posting 0.5- percent growth in the second quarter and 0.7 percent growth in the third quarter.