The sorry state of agriculture in RP

Critical Reporting
HOW MEDIA SEES IT, AND NOT OTHERS
by: ELY P. DEJARESCO (email: elydejaresco@yahoo.com)

The observation is correct that Filipino farmers are getting fewer & older, even as the government is right in batting for increased support for agricultural colleges. to produce new breed of young, technicians, with savvy and highly productive farmers.

Amid soaring food prices and worsening hunger, the government should find ways to augment in a big way the budgetary support for state-run agricultural colleges, to enable them to quickly develop a new generation of young and highly productive farmers. But our agricultural schools even here in Bayawan and Guihulngan are now in a sorry state. Much is yet to be desired for it to attain the standards they aim for.

Studies have shown that the average Filipino farmer is now 55 years old. Sadly, very few young Filipinos are now going into farming. If the trend continues, our farms will continue to decline, and food production will also deteriorate irreversibly. Sen. Loren Legarda, senate chair on economic affairs is correct in her projection. The results of the latest Census on Agriculture indicate that some 9,900 farms are being erased every year from the country’s inventory of arable lands. Blame this on the lack of new farmers and the indiscriminate conversion of farmlands into subdivisions and industrial estates. Plus the wishy-washy management of our department of agriculture who are fed with mostly wrong data from the field by their own people. Gov. Emilio Macias II here is aware of this sad predicament.

And he wants to catch DA people red handed so he can justifiably fire them.

The Department of Agriculture and the Commission on Higher Education should now draw up special crash courses on modern farming systems and entrepreneurship. Then increase the subsidy of provincial agricultural schools which are now being virtually neglected by the national government. Definitely this is what federalization of our regions will solve almost instantly.

The senator likewise proposed a special program that would spur graduates of agricultural schools to pursue farm-related businesses run by a new breed of farmer-entrepreneurs who are surplus oriented. We are thankful that Sen. Legarda proposed that a portion of the P17-billion annual funding for the implementation of the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Program through 2015, be used to revitalize agricultural schools and to support young farmers. The government could also tap the P6-billion Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund to bring back the glory days of agriculture in our countrysides.