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Cayetano: Food security key to end disorder
 
“Kapag walang gutom na mamamayan, walang gulo sa bayan.”
 
This is what presidential bet Davao City Mayor Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte and his running mate Senate Majority leader Alan Peter Cayetano said as they highlighted the importance of food security to address the country's disorder in a town hall meeting on Monday in Concepcion, Tarlac.
 
Speaking to an audience of farmers, coop members, and irrigators' association memers, the tandem said that lack of support for the agricultural sector adds to the lack of peace and disorder in the country.
 
Cayetano told of the plight of Mang Max, a farm worker for 15 years in Tarlac who does not have his own land and barely makes ends meet. “Dalawang beses lang siya umani sa isang taon, usually March and August, at 15 kaban lang ang napupunta sa kanya mula sa 100 na average niya.”
 
“Under a Duterte-Cayetano leadership, Mang Max wouldn’t have to become a construction worker on top of being a farm worker,” said Cayetano, explaining that Mang Max earns a maximum of P30,000 a year, which could not meet the needs of his family of 10 children.
 
Cayetano said they are pushing for 100% free irrigation systems in all major rice-producing provinces. The senator also said they will relocate the Department of Agriculture (DA) to Mindanao to transform it as the country's food basket.
 
"Our aim is real inclusive growth through regional development and social justice. Through this we achieve the twin goals of achieving food security and ending the disorder in the people's daily lives," Cayetano ended.

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