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Ghio Ong - The Philippine Star
June 22, 2025 | 12:00am
Farmers harvest palay from a field in a village in Lingayen, Pangasinan on February 1, 2025.
STAR / Cesar Ramirez
MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Agriculture needs a bigger budget to be able to help those in the industry recover from issues affecting them and further bring down food prices, a farmer’s group appealed.
“The DA needs a bigger budget to enable it to help us, farmers and fishermen, increase our harvests and fish catch. Hog raisers also need to repopulate and vaccinate hogs amid the ASF (African swine fever), which becomes prevalent during the rainy season,” said Agricultural Sector Alliance of the Philippines (AGAP) Party-list Rep. Nicanor Briones in a statement.
From second on the national budget appropriations list, he noted the DA budget “now ranks sixth.”
“The government needs about P500-billion budget, instead of the proposed P237.4 billion for next year, which is an increase of only 10 percent from the previous year,” he pointed out.
He noted “the DA hardly has enough funds to address ASF, hog vaccination, El Niño and La Niña effects and rice supply.”
A bigger budget for DA could help the government “effectively implement the national food security program and make food affordable to Filipinos,” said AGAP.
Briones added that AGAP would “push for the passage of the ‘Livestock Development and Competitive Act’ to support agricultural businesses.”
