Withering agriculture

Much like a plant starved of adequate amounts of water, Philippine agriculture is showing signs of withering, and if no attention is immediately given at this point in time, it will surely stop growing and just die.

The statistics don’t lie. In the 1960s, the share of agriculture in the domestic economy was already less than 35 percent. Two decades later, it was already below 25 percent. Today, agriculture accounts for just about 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

The big irony about this withering state is that very few seem to care – not the leadership of the national government, not the Department of Agriculture (DA), not the bureaucratic economists, and not the general citizenship including the affected farmers.

Sure, the DA provides technical and financial support to farmers and fishermen that are affected by infestation or typhoons. But we all know, and as gleaned from the deterioration of Philippine agriculture over the last half century, this is not enough.

Our agriculture sector needs more irrigated lands, more modern seeding and harvesting technology and facilities, efficient farm to market channels, lower transportation costs, and other inputs that will boost their competitiveness against imported products.

Deliberate move?

The big question thus crops up: Is the government bent on letting the agricultural sector rot away, perhaps in favor of business outsourcing services, or commercial and industrial growth, or the billions of dollars that are repatriated by Filipinos working overseas?

Are we prepared to be an economy that would prefer to buy China’s cheap onions or Thailand’s lower priced rice to feed our growing population, or to import beef from Australia, or pork and fish from wherever?

We’re already doing that for our clothing requirements, buying dresses, shoes and accessories from either China or Thailand or elsewhere. We have a thriving retailing industry that fills its warehouses with goods imported from every conceivable part of the world, except this country.

Is this good or bad?

Food security

Perhaps, as in the case for most consumer goods, buying products from another country – especially if such is not produced locally or is priced lower with what is manufactured locally, or is of better quality – is acceptable.

Such could also be the case for other food products, especially those that are not available locally. Our processed meat industry does this, mainly because the local growers do not have adequate supply of cheap offal.

It’s understandable also about wheat or soybean or milk importation since these products that are not available or in very limited stocks from local producers.

But garlic, onions, even tomatoes are now imported. Of course, we all know that a percentage of our rice is now also being sourced outside Philippine territory. Increasing varieties of vegetables are also being brought in to compete with our own produce. We’re even importing certain fish species now.

Should this trigger alarm bells? For an archipelago like ours with a population growth that beats most countries in this world, shouldn’t food security mean having ample sources of locally produced farm products that would assure continuous supply for our countrymen if other countries would go to war?

We have mangled the meaning of food security thinking that as long as there’s a source somewhere in the world, our people will not starve.

History lessons

History teaches us that most of progressive economies were able to accumulate wealth after ensuring that their collective food needs were adequately met by local production, thus somehow protecting them from the vagaries of global food pricing and supply.

America did this. Our ASEAN neighbor, Thailand, is doing this and continues to do so. China, Japan, and Australia are doing this. In the same way, Indonesia is regulating its rich fishing grounds to make sure that it has enough supply for its people.

So why aren’t we doing it? Is it because we are a forgiving race in a sun-blessed nation that makes us quickly forget hunger pangs brought about by a devastating storm just as soon as the new leaves of crops sprout from the land?

We care little about food supply buffering, unlike other essentials like oil products, because we don’t have winter spells that force the land to sleep. The story of the ant stashing away food for the rainy day does not have quite the same impact on us as it does our colleagues from the northern or southern hemispheres of this world where winters can turn cruel.

Not too late

Our withering state of agriculture is much like global warming: you can sniff signs in the air, but somehow choose to be impervious to the warnings. Before it’s too late, lest we wake up one day to realize that everything we’re eating comes via a container van from overseas, let’s act.

Let’s put our agriculture sector back on track by providing the proper direction and resource support. Yes, let’s increase budget support that should energize our land and water farms as well as livestock sectors to provide the right kind of food security to our people.

But more importantly, let’s acknowledge that we need to be proud that we are eating food that’s harvested by our farmers and fishermen, that’s grown by local poultry and hog farmers.

Revitalize or wither

Let’s look forward to the day when Philippine agricultural products can be exported to other countries, not just because they taste better, but because they are competitively priced, thanks to a revitalized agriculture program that gives value to its natural resources and people.

Otherwise, this early, let’s just kiss goodbye any aspirations of agricultural growth, food security, and the DA (rename it Department of Imported Agricultural Products), and retrain all those farm workers (about one third of the current labor force) to become overseas employees.

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