INDIA is the world's largest producer of milk, producing more than double the amount annually, about 230 million metric tons, than the US (about 105 million MT), which for decades had the world's biggest dairy industry. There are millions of dairy farmers in India, and while the country is not the biggest exporter of milk and dairy products, its export trade is still substantial, amounting to $272.6 million last year, according to India's Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda).
That business, along with India's enormous domestic demand for dairy products, is now under critical threat, and, of course, it is the result of climate change. India is struggling with a severe fodder (i.e., crops such as hay and alfalfa) shortage, which has made feeding dairy cattle prohibitively expensive. Erratic weather patterns, including prolonged droughts and intense heat waves, have crashed fodder production across the country, leading to prices for fodder almost tripling over the past two years. It also does not help that India, like the Philippines, suffers from the problem of shrinking cultivation areas due to the conversion of land for residential and commercial development or shifting cultivation to higher-value commercial crops.
In an article last month in Devex about the crisis, one farmer who was interviewed explained the extent of the problem. Each liter of milk he produces, he said, costs 37 rupees ($0.44, or P24.83), including feed and labor costs. However, he is only able to sell that milk to the local milk collection center for 27 rupees ($0.32, P18.12). This particular farmer, who has had to reduce the size of his herd from 350 cows to 230 in order to raise money, produces 1,600 liters per day, meaning that he is losing about 16,000 rupees ($190.55, P10,738) every day. In a country where the average farmer's income is just under 11,000 rupees per month, that is a recipe for financial apocalypse.
Things are not expected to get better any time soon. A study done 20 years ago by the National Center for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research predicted that "[a]n expected deficit of 65 percent of green fodder and 25 percent of dry fodder is expected for Indian livestock by 2025," but that was based on factors such as land conversion and the population of farmers decreasing due to general economic conditions and age; significant climate impacts were not really considered. The reality is that things are already much worse than that. The official figures are that the shortages of green and dry fodder are 36 percent and 11 percent, respectively, but those figures are three years old; most farmers, including those who cultivate fodder, put the deficit at closer to 75 percent.
What this means for the rest of the world, particularly for a country like the Philippines that imports a substantial amount of its dairy product consumption, is that prices for milk and dairy products are going to go through the roof. They have already been increasing over the past several months, and it is likely those increases are going to accelerate. India is about to shift from being a dairy producer that exports surplus production to importing to meet domestic demand; that is an opportunity for other dairy-exporting countries, but the increase in commodity prices will tail back to us — not just for milk and other dairy products, but for every food product that has dairy product ingredients. And just in time for the Christmas season, too. Enjoy that queso de bola this year — that is, if you can afford it; it will be more valuable than it usually is.
****
Ombudsman and unwelcome leftover from the regrettable Duterte administration Samuel Martires indeed kicked the hornet's nest with his ill-considered and patently ridiculous order suspending Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Monalisa Dimalanta at the behest of the so-called National Association of Electricity Consumers (Nasecore). Publicly, the backlash was immediate. Former energy secretary and current Alternergy Holdings Corp. chairman Vicente Perez, the Philippine Independent Power Producers Association (Pippa), the Retail Electricity Suppliers Association of the Philippines, and, in a joint statement, the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Philippine Exporters Confederation, and the Employers Confederation of the Philippines all issued statements in support of Dimalanta, questioning the suspension and warning that it would derail energy sector development and reform, as well as drive away energy investors.
Those statements, which have already been reported in this paper and elsewhere, are all politely worded. In conversations not meant for public consumption, however, energy sector people are not at all polite about expressing how universally furious they are about the Ombudsman's decision. The sentiment is both understandable and entirely correct, as the order was ludicrous on its face, and there is a great deal of obvious irregularity with this particular case. For one thing, both the Office of the Ombudsman as well as the complainant Nasecore have been reluctant to disclose the actual complaint that led to the suspension order; as of the beginning of this week, the complaint apparently had not yet been furnished to Dimalanta or her attorneys.
Going by the Ombudsman's order, since that is all anyone has at this point, it seems incredible that not yet acting on five nuisance motions from Nasecore or its fellow travelers — two of which were simply motions asking that other motions filed a few days earlier be addressed — rises to the level of "grave misconduct, grave abuse of authority, and gross neglect of duty of conduct prejudicial to the best interest of service" in the mind of the Ombudsman. As I said in my column about this last Sunday ("Ombudsman plays the clown with ERC ruling," Sept. 8, 2024), the Ombudsman is the last person in the government who should be calling out another official for delays in acting on petitions, given the massive backlog in his own office.
Case in point, revealed by my fellow columnist Al Vitangcol Jr. over the week, Martires has for four years ignored a specific complaint citing clear violations of the Government Procurement Reform Act (GPRA) by BSP officials concerning the national ID cards. That, of course, has blown up into a new scandal and probably put the final nail in the coffin of the ill-fated program, something that might have been avoided had Martires done his part to correct the issue years ago. The selectivity in what he thinks is important with respect to his acceptance of the vexatious complaint against the ERC chairman has led some to speculate darkly that he may be a tool, unwitting or otherwise, of as yet unidentified nefarious interests. There is no evidence to suggest that, so it would be irresponsible to entertain the notion. But the baffling oddity of the order against Dimalanta is such that even Martires couldn't be surprised if someone harbors those suspicions.
In its statement, the Retail Electricity Suppliers Association said the decision "puts at risk the trust, independence and authority of the ERC." I disagree. I think the only thing the decision does is severely damage the trust in and credibility of the Office of the Ombudsman, and it will take a frank apology and quick corrective action on this miscarriage of justice to get it back.