“The path that the Department of Agriculture took during my first 5 months of leadership was a rough road. It was never easy.”

These are the words of DA Secretary Emmanuel Piñol during the press conference held at the DA Central office last December 20, 2016.

“DA is exploring various ways for us to improve our yield and efficiency through the Masaganang Ani 6000 program.” Piñol said.

The Masaganang Ani 6000 aims to utilize the existing rice fields of the country by applying the latest farming techniques with the aid of modern technology, and push for farm mechanization. Ultimately, the initiative aims to increase yield and improve the quality of end products.

On the other hand, the color-coded agriculture map, which shows the soil type, suitable crops to be planted, and the possible risks in a specific area, has been completed already.

The Secretary stressed that this will greatly aid the Filipino farmers who now have a scientific reference and guidelines for their production and other farm management activities.

An interactive version on the map will be launched early next year as additional data and modifications are needed to complete its launching.

The aggie chief also announced an ongoing food consumption study in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to determine the needed production of agri products in the country and to establish the amount of importation.

In line with the mechanization of the agri industry, Piñol also announced his recent round table discussion with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for the P825-Million Philippine Agriculture Modernization Project. This aims to attain increased productivity, reduce production costs, reduce harvest and post harvest losses and maintain quality of products.

On the issue regarding SPS clearance, Sec. Piñol said that it is just now that they figured out the root cause of the problem.

“The unmonitored SPS clearances, which traders re-use and abuse resulted in unmonitored quantification of the goods that are coming in the country,” he said.

As such, he immediately ordered the review of the issuance of SPS clearances to make sure the legitimacy and to prevent this from happening again.

“Of course there would be inconveniences. I did not promise that this would be easy. Well at least for the legitimate traders it’s OK but for the illegal traders, we are making their lives harder by preventing their sneaky tactics to slip under our watch,” he ended.