LET us forget for a moment that the Masagana 99, for all its grand architecture and ambitious reach and technology support from the International Rice Research Institute, ended up as one big 'mess.' Not my words but those of Duterte-era Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez, who, indeed, cleaned up the wreckage and detritus and the flotsam of the program after taking over the agriculture portfolio in 1987.Let us even assume that the program was a 1970s/1980s success story and there is no historical experience, no cautionary tale, that prevents the current government from replicating the program. Now the question is this: Can the administration of President Marcos Jr. do a repeat of the Masagana 99 program of his late father, either in its entirety, or at least 97 percent of it, in the 21st century? Is that a viable proposition? Can Mr. Marcos Jr. revive the signature food production program of Mr. Marcos Sr.?No. No way. Let us now go into the details on the ' whys.' And why, at this point in the 21st century, you cannot draw from the architecture of the old program and fashion a modern-day version. Masagana 99, always bear this in mind because it is of critical importance, was a government-supervised, government-sponsored food production program focused on rice but powered and energized by cheap loans. Its most important component was cheap credit, which steadily flow to the rice-producing areas was guaranteed by a credit window established by the then-Central Bank of the Philippines precisely for that specific program. The key words here are credit window and the Central Bank during President Marcos Sr.'s time.A network of established rural banks that served as funding conduits was the linkage that ensured the seamless flow of cheap funding from the Central Bank's special rediscounting window to the paddies. The interest rates were missionary rates, lower by several notches than commercial/industrial credit. The rural banks that served as conduits for the cheap money were allowed a certain spread but on one condition. Their fiduciary obligation of the partners — the rural banks — was to see to it that only legitimate farmers were granted cheap loans and that the loans would, indeed, be used to produce rice (production loans), not for 'barikan' ( drinking sprees) or 'tupadas' (cockfights).Because cheap credit — then, now and maybe forever — is the lifeblood of government-supervised food production programs, the relevant question is this: Can a 21st-century rice production program supervised by the government tap a deep well of a funding source similar to the rediscounting window established by the then-Central Bank just for the Masagana 99 program? No, no way.At about the same time Mrs. Aquino assumed the presidency in 1986, the IMF-World Bank (WB) advised all countries asking for support from the multilateral institutions that the era of cheap loans for supervised food programs was over. Henceforth, the IMF-World Bank said, central bankers should cease and desist from opening up special windows for cheap food production programs. Agricultural loans should be at par with the rates of other loans: household, commercial, industrial, etc. And from then on, the Central Bank — later renamed the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas under the banking reform act principally written by then-senator Raul Roco — dutifully complied with the IMF-WB advisory.With that cease-and-desist directive and the dutiful compliance by our own central bankers, where do we get the cheap financing for a 21st-century version of Masagana 99? Without cheap credit, the anchor of the Marcos Sr. Masagana 99, the new version proposed by Marcos Jr. cannot simply be put in place because rice farmers, 99 percent of them small and poor, cannot afford the current commercial and industrial rates that are uniformly charged by the banking system, from the universal banks to the thrift banks and rural banks. That deep well from which cheap production loans gushed out from in the 1970s/1980s has dried up and is gone — forever.Don't look at the Land Bank of the Philippines. Despite its original mandate — serving farmers and agrarian reform beneficiaries was its original charter and mandate — it has to contribute billions of pesos to the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF), a sovereign wealth fund that has to extract funds from the LandBank probably under duress. The MIF contributions alone would sap the strength of the LandBank and farm loans would suffer.There is another minor hurdle, the devolution of powers to local government units (LGUs) under the Local Government Code.The Masagana 99, the old version, had armies upon armies of farm extension workers with their ubiquitous Enduros. They guided the rice farmers through the production processes required under Masagana 99: use of hybrid seeds, rice nurturing and soil fertilization, pest control. During the peak implementation of Masagana 99, there was one extension worker for every barrio and agronomy — the study of rice culture — that became the most popular course of choice for many young men and women from the barrios.The Local Government Code decreed the devolution of frontline workers who then worked for the national agencies such as the Department of Agriculture into the LGUs. The result was this. The Bureau of Agricultural Extension that had administrative and operational control of the farm extension workers lost its mandate over the extension workers after the devolution. So, ambitious programs crafted at the central headquarters of the Department of Agriculture, whose implementation would be national in scope, were deprived of the extension workers who need to oversee the technical implementation of the programs at the grassroots level.A 21st-century Masagana 99 program will have no manpower pool, trained agricultural technicians and agronomists to implement a revived program. A revived Masagana 99 will require at least one agronomist for every barrio and currently no such massive pool of trained agronomists exists. The municipal agricultural offices (MAOs) now under the mayors are of many disciplines: animal health, soil science, horticulture, fisheries, etc. Some MAOs are even graduates of non-agri courses doing what are essentially agri-centric functions. After the devolution, many personnel with the supposedly agriculture-focused assignments have been serving as gofers and aides of mayors and governors.Without the availability of cheap production loans and without armies of extension workers, this harsh reality stares Mr. Marcos Jr: he can't revive Masagana 99, unless he just wants to adopt the old name and implement a shell of a feckless program.
