With the liberalization

With the liberalization of rice trade and the arrival of weather exchange, I may want to project to say that Philippine agriculture is now at a totally crucial duration.

I am not pronouncing that the liberalization of rice exchange is horrific. In fact, I see it as an opportunity for the united states to reconsider, reorient and restrategize its agriculture rules, programs and initiatives. What worries me is rice farmers who are trapped in poverty will really surrender cultivating the crop once much less highly-priced rice imports hit the retail stage. And their numbers can reach the loads of heaps finishing up with out livelihood, or worse, begging inside the streets for alms. So is there a program in region to help the rice farmers who can be displaced to shift to cash crops with export capacity like espresso, cacao, cassava, rubber, palm oil and tropical end result, amongst others?

Agriculture Secretary William Dar affords the damages and losses added with the aid of typhoons in 2019

I need now not give an explanation for how weather exchange has been badly affecting Philippine agriculture because this is already apparent.

Given those elements plus the fact that our fertile soil and water resources are dwindling, what needs to be carried out to keep Philippine agriculture from going into a downward spiral?

On November 15 to sixteen, many solutions for the us of a’s agriculture region have been generated from the Peoples Agriculture Summit convened by means of AGILA on the Pampanga State Agricultural College in Magalang, Pampanga. I synthesized what had been mentioned from the summit and concluded that we do no longer want fancy answers to make the us of a’s agriculture quarter an engine of increase with the intention to take away poverty national.

Framework needed

Philippine agriculture is presently beset by using these foremost demanding situations: Low farm productivity; limited farm diversification; low investment; restricted use of generation; an underdeveloped agri-meals production quarter; and untapped export capability.

Also, the growth prices of the Philippine agriculture region has been inconsistent due to the fact that 2014, when a boom of one.83 percent turned into recorded. In 2015, it registered a 0.11-percent increase however slid by 1.41 percentage in 2016. In 2017, the u . S . A .’s agriculture area recorded a strong three.Ninety five-percentage increase rate. But this year to date has been a miserable one for the world, with a 1.47-percentage boom rate recorded inside the first area, zero.07-percentage growth inside the second sector, and a zero.Eighty three-percent contraction inside the 1/3 area.

From what I actually have determined in the ones years, Philippine agriculture lacked a holistic improvement framework that should have blanketed large investments outside of the rice enterprise and the broader software of technological know-how and era throughout all subsectors (plants, cattle, hen and fisheries) that might also cause more fee-including. Also, intense weather events have become worse during that period, accentuated by greater powerful typhoons and storms hitting the usa.

So what’s the manner forward in this issue? My answer — we want to reorient Philippine agriculture with a improvement framework to modernize and industrialize it.

I marvel if frameworking seems to an alien concept amongst bureaucrats. Or do bureaucrats worry operating within a improvement framework due to the fact it may straightjacket them?

But without a improvement framework, it would be nearly impossible to make green use of financial, logistical and human assets, and people aren’t in abundance within the Philippine setting.

Also, the improvement framework have to set an objective, and in this case, it’s miles modernizing and industrializing the united states’s agriculture zone.

Modernizing and industrializing the united states’s agriculture zone, however, does not truly imply adopting on a massive scale proven technologies for the arena and setting up more agri-based totally groups, due to the fact that method may want to isolate smallholders.

And while the Department of Agriculture and local government devices are at the forefront of agricultural development in the usa, the personal region have to take the lead in organising more agri-based totally businesses, adopting
technology-based totally answers and intensifying cost including, at the same time as fostering mutually-beneficial partnerships with smallholder farmers and fisher folk. The goal is to establish an agriculture zone this is meals at ease, aggressive, resilient, sustainable and inclusive.

There are a whole lot of opportunities nowadays to pursue a modernized and industrialized agriculture quarter, with import substitution and export promotion amongst them.

When it comes to import substitution, our farmers, in tandem with the agri-based business companies, can produce greater palm oil, espresso, cacao, black pepper and tamarind. Yes, we nevertheless must import a massive part of our black pepper and tamarind requirements. I find this ironical because we can without difficulty domesticate black pepper and tamarind on a larger scale.

For exports, coconut merchandise, rubber in raw or processed form, dried/frozen fruits, shrimps and artisan chocolate have an present or growing marketplace globally.

When it comes to becoming an export powerhouse for agricultural products, the Philippines can learn loads from its Southeast Asian opposite numbers who’ve an wonderful extension carrier device in region, have invested appropriately in research and improvement, consolidated farms into extra effective blocks, and facilitated non-public investments.

More importantly, our Southeast Asian counterparts have a expert forms not laid low with politics that facilitate the formula of plan-pushed applications/initiatives which have continuity, specially over the long time.
In the second one installment of this column-collection, I will discuss the vision, strategies, traits and goals/objectives for a modernized and industrialized agriculture area that is hooked up through a holistic improvement framework.