Looking Back, Looking Forward: What to do with Philippine Agriculture

Abstract

Compared with our ASEAN neighbors against whom we usually benchmark ourselves, the Philippines is making the least progress in providing a better life for its people. While they have significantly brought their poverty rates down, poverty among Filipinos has persisted at a painfully embarrassing rate of 26%, most of that poverty is found in the countryside, among farmers and fisherfolk. The 1.7% rate of growth of agriculture, which does not even match our population growth during the last five years (2011-2015), is symptomatic of this malaise, yet the ingredients to make agriculture move forward and be more productive, competitive, sustainable, and economically rewarding to our millions of small farmers and fisherfolk are largely in place. Our moderate tropical environment and rainfall with irrigation make year-round growing possible. Our vast and carefully-managed fisheries resources should provide a sustainable supply of affordable and quality animal proteins in our diets. We have a fairly educated workforce and a modest but working higher education and scientific research infrastructure in agriculture. We have an established and increasingly competitive food and beverage manufacturing subsector. Progressive legislations are in place with the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA) of 1997 and the Fisheries Code of 1998, and a palpable improving political will to support agriculture is established, as manifested by the expanding congressional appropriations for the Department of Agriculture (DA). What should we do with agriculture in 2016 and beyond to move it forward? Beyond generalities, what do we specifically want to see done by the government and those with a stake in agriculture to help farmers and fisherfolk attain a better standard of living for themselves, for all of us, now and in the future? There is no single magic bullet that will cure all the ills of Philippine agriculture. We need to come together, marshal, and direct our resources along four major platforms of reform, namely (a) reform the bureaucracy of the Department of Agriculture; (b) meaningful participation of stakeholders in the governance of agriculture; (c) continuing investments in rural institutions and infrastructure; and (d) closure on a few important but contentious issues such as a rice-centric agriculture.