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The Department of Agriculture will soft-launch its Command Center in November, a digital platform designed to provide data-driven management of the country’s food supply chain, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. announced Monday.

“When I accepted this Cabinet portfolio, my thinking was ‘produce, produce, produce.’ Nearly two years into the job, I’ve realized that an equally important mantra is ‘manage, manage, manage,’” Tiu Laurel said.

Powered by trade data from the Bureau of Plant Industry’s Osiris system, the Command Center will initially focus on the rice value chain. The system will consolidate data on production, imports, stock levels, product types, movements, wholesale and retail prices, consumption, post-harvest infrastructure, utilization, irrigation, spoilage and global market trends.

“The DA already has most of this data, but they are scattered across different agencies. We must bring them together and make market sense of them, plus gather what we still lack so we can deploy our limited resources more efficiently and productively,” Tiu Laurel said.

In April and May, rice imports reached 970,000 metric tons, far exceeding the country’s average monthly consumption of 320,000 metric tons. The oversupply drove down the price of unhusked rice and prompted President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to suspend rice importation for two months beginning Sept. 1.

The DA expects sharper supply and demand forecasting from the Command Center, combined with the restoration of regulatory powers to the DA and National Food Authority through amendments to the Rice Tariffication Law, to strengthen buffers against price shocks while improving farmer incomes.

The model will eventually be expanded to other sectors such as high-value crops, livestock, poultry and fisheries, along with a central registry of food facilities and warehouses with real-time stock levels. This is in line with President Marcos’ vision of modernized agriculture and a food-secure Philippines.

Source : manilastandard