Rotting crops, paved promises

Rotting crops, paved promises | Daily Tribune

Recent heartbreaking news reports highlight the severe human cost of a failing food supply chain: farmers dumping truckloads of fresh cabbage and carrots on roadsides, choosing to let them rot.

In a painful irony, while city consumers struggle with soaring food prices, rural farmers are forced to throw away their hard-earned harvests. They do this simply because the cost of transporting the food is higher than what they would make at the market.

Yet, as these crops wither on dirt roads, the money meant to pave those roads lies trapped in government red tape.

Just this month, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. revealed during congressional hearings that the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) only released the critical funding paperwork (the SARO) at the end of August 2026. Because of this delay, bidding for projects can only start this September. This pushes actual road construction into the final three months of the year.

The Department of Agriculture’s (DA) takeover of the Farm-to-Market Road (FMR) program was supposed to fix a broken system.

This historic 2026 transition was triggered by massive corruption uncovered in legislative investigations. Most notably, lawmakers exposed a staggering P10 billion overpricing scandal and a history of “ghost projects” under the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

For decades, money meant to help rural communities lined the pockets of corrupt contractors and local politicians. This left farmers with half-baked, unpaved paths that wash away during the first typhoon.

By taking control, the DA promised absolute transparency. It rolled out a high-tech “FMR Watch” portal that uses time-lapse photography to track road progress in real time.

But a website is only as good as the roads it monitors. With the DA now solely responsible, it cannot blame other agencies if things go wrong. The pressure is entirely on Secretary Tiu Laurel to prove that his agency can build a cleaner, faster road network than the DPWH did.

As if government delays were not enough, the DA’s first year handling these massive road projects has run straight into a global crisis.

The agency had ambitiously planned to use cheaper engineering technologies to lower building costs to P12 million or P13.5 million per kilometer, making public funds go further. However, the economic fallout from the escalating war in the Middle East has shattered those plans.

With global oil prices surging, the cost of asphalt, fuel for heavy equipment and shipping has skyrocketed. This month, the DA made a grim admission: It must raise its base cost back up to a flexible P15 million per kilometer.

When budgets are tight, this means the government gets less pavement for its money. When a kilometer of road costs more to build, fewer villages get connected. This further isolates the very farmers who are already dumping their rotting produce by the wayside.

Even if the DA miraculously overcomes this year’s delays and economic hurdles, the long-term future of our agricultural roads remains alarming.

The country currently faces a massive road shortage of roughly 55,000 to 60,000 kilometers. Fully closing this gap would require an estimated P300 billion. Yet, the newly proposed 2027 national budget reveals a shocking disconnect: a planned road allocation of just P16 billion, which cuts this year’s budget in half.

This budget cut makes no sense. The administration cannot loudly claim that feeding the nation is its top priority while quietly cutting off the funds needed to achieve it. Slashing infrastructure funds ensures that rural farmers will remain cut off from markets for years to come.

Empty political promises will not pave our rural roads, nor will they put food on Filipino tables. If the government wants to end the tragic sight of farmers abandoning their harvests on dirt roads, it must treat agricultural infrastructure as an absolute emergency.

The DBM must fix the slow system that delays fund releases until late August. At the same time, Congress must aggressively raise the proposed 2027 road budget during the current debates.

Our farmers cannot survive on delayed funds and shrinking resources. It is time for the government to match its spending with its promises and build the reliable roads our farmers have rightfully earned.

Our farmers have spent generations paying the price for promises that lead nowhere. It is time they finally get the roads they need to feed the nation.