DURING the tenure of Dr. William Dar as secretary of the Department of Agriculture (DA), so-called farmers, agricultural traders and producers' advocacy groups pejoratively called the agency the 'Department of Agriculture Importation' (DAI).

The reason was that DA allowed the importation of significant amounts of agricultural products due to production shortfalls resulting from an outbreak of African swine fever, the severe lockdown during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the eruption of Taal Volcano, and successive destructive typhoons that hit our agricultural — particularly rice — areas.