The need to raise farm sector’s yield

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations’ index of food-commodity prices in March allows many policymakers to heave a sigh of relief for now. FAO reported in early April that food prices eased 2.1 percent last month (See, “Global food costs mark one year of drops, at odds with inflation,” in the BusinessMirror April 9, 2023). Grains, vegetable oils and dairy, which offset a rise in sugar and meat prices, drove the decline.

The gauge has fallen 21 percent from a record set a year ago when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted grain exports. According to FAO, the cereal price index declined 5.6 percent from February, with international wheat prices falling by 7.1 percent, pushed down by strong output in Australia, improved crop conditions in the European Union, high supplies from the Russian Federation and ongoing exports from Ukraine from its Black Sea ports. Also, corn prices fell by 4.6 percent, due partly to expectations of a record harvest in Brazil, while those of rice eased by 3.2 percent amid ongoing or imminent harvests in major exporting countries, including India, Vietnam and Thailand.

However, average prices were still higher by 40 percent from two years ago, according to FAO. And the lower global prices are not being seen in groceries and supermarkets. While food commodities are declining, elevated oil prices continue to put pressure on food prices as higher energy, labor, and transport costs make it difficult for producers to keep prices stable.

Unfortunately for countries that rely on food imports, like the Philippines, the weakness of their currency against the dollar is also compounding their production woes. This is now evident in domestic rice prices, which have gone up in March by an average of 2.6 percent on an annual basis mainly due to more expensive inputs, such as fertilizer. While inflation has fallen below record highs, it remained elevated, at 7.6 percent in March.

Apart from the continued threat posed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which would keep commodity prices elevated, extreme weather could dampen global food output in the succeeding months. Bloomberg reported that a dry spell is wilting crops and delaying plantings in some of Europe’s top produce growers. About 60 percent of the Spanish countryside is gripped by drought and conditions are worsening in Italy and Portugal.

With the exception of Spain, the Philippines’s top source of pork products, European countries hit by drought are not major sources of food for Filipinos. However, the drought that affected these countries could put pressure on global prices as they may have to purchase their food requirements from other countries. The impact of drought on soy and corn could also make meat and poultry products more expensive.

These signals should be taken into account by local policymakers, some of whom have declared that they will rely on science to guide their decision making (See, “Govt banks on science to tame food inflation,” in the BusinessMirror, April 6, 2023). Official government data indicate that the Philippines continues to rely on foreign countries to fill the gap in its food requirements. We hope that these developments would give them an extra push to immediately put in place measures that would raise the productivity of the Philippine farm sector.

Since 2005 ✝

Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua Founder

China affirms former Soviet nations’ sovereignty after uproar

BeIJING—The Chinese government said Monday it respected the sovereignty of former Soviet Union republics after Beijing’s ambassador to France caused an uproar in europe by saying they weren’t sovereign nations.

Ambassador Lu Shaye was being called on the carpet by the governments of former Soviet republics, and French President Emmanuel Macron, since Lu’s comment to a French broadcaster. While answering a question about the status of Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, Lu said that there was no agreement to “solidify their status as a sovereign country.”

The governments of former Soviet republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were among those who rejected Ambassador Lu Shaye’s comment. Macron, at a summit in Ostend, Belgium, said in an interview with TFI Info, that “I don’t think it’s the place of a diplomat to use such language.”

He offered “full solidarity to countries which were attacked in the reading of their histories and their borders.”

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said earlier that “China respects the sovereign status of the former Soviet countries after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.”

Mao Ning said Beijing’s position is “consistent and clear” but gave no indication whether Lu’s comment was considered incorrect.

The ambassador drew a parallel between Ukraine and the other former Soviet republics that declared independence from Moscow when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.

“With regards to international law, even these ex-Soviet Union countries, they do not, they do not have the status—how to say it?— that’s effective in international law, because there is no international agreement to solidify their status as a sovereign country,” Lu told news channel LCI.

The Chinese Embassy in France clarified the ambassador’s remarks, saying in a statement that Lu was not making a “political declaration, but an expression of his personal view during a televised debate.” His remarks “should not be the object of over-interpretation,” it

The Chinese Embassy in France clarified the ambassador’s remarks, saying in a statement that Lu was not making a “political declaration, but an expression of his personal view during a televised debate.” said. “The position of China ... has not changed.”

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, it said, “China was among the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with the nations concerned.... The Chinese side respects the status of sovereign nations born after the breakup of the Soviet Union.”

Speaking after chairing a meeting of European Union foreign ministers, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, welcomed the clarification provided by China.

“Beijing has distanced itself from the unacceptable remark of its ambassador to Paris,” Borrell told reporters in Luxembourg. He described the response from China’s foreign ministry as “good news,” and added:

“I believe that this issue has now been duly clarified.”

France and Estonia advised

Ambassador Lu to think before he speaks.

In a meeting Monday with the ambassador, France’s Foreign Ministry underscored “the unacceptable character” of his questioning “the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all states,” according to a ministry statement.

It said the international community—China included—recognized the 15 nations which gained or recovered independence with the break-up of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine and its borders that included Crimea when it declared independence in 1991. The ministry called on the ambassador to reflect on “the official positions of his country when he speaks publicly,” the statement said.

In Estonia, senior foreign ministry official Kristi Karelsohn told the Chinese charge d’affaires that even if the remarks by the Paris ambassador, Lu, reflected a personal position, he was nevertheless an official representative of China.

“We hope that representatives of China will refrain from expressing these kinds of opinions in the future,” Karelsohn said according to

See “China,” A15