August 24, 2007 | 12:00am
BUTUAN CITY – The younger generation of Filipinos has shown a lack of interest in farming, leaving farms in the hands of graying workers and putting agriculture at risk.
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, however, vowed his office would lure back the interest of younger farmers, saying that contrary to common perception, there’s money and opportunity in farming.
Yap said the Department of Agriculture (DA) aims to create more farmers’ institutes for the younger generation in the country.
“We have to show young Filipinos that there are many opportunities as well as challenges in farming,” Yap told an open forum here with farmers, concerned government agencies and other sectors. “We have to have good markets for our agricultural products and enhance skills and productivity of young farmers.”
He said that as the children of aging farmers leave for opportunities in the city or even abroad, the problem of productivity is greatly affected since only the older farmers are left to do the work.
During the forum, Rosanne Maglilin, executive secretary of the National Secretariat for Social Action, reported that NASSA with Caritas Philippines has opened many young farmers’ institutes and training centers in Luzon. She said the steps taken to entice young Filipino farmers back to farming has yielded positive results.
Yap, on the other hand, said that as land acquisition is another problem for the agriculture sector, he wanted to talk to the Department of National Defense led by Gilbert Teodoro to open up thousands of hectares of military reservation areas in the country for a joint “productive endeavor.”
Yap also said he wanted to trim the dependency of the more than 500,000 indigenous people in the Caraga Region on the logging industry by opening up thousands of ancestral domain lands to agricultural efforts.
Yap was here yesterday to inaugurate the 3.5-hectare Sustainable Agricultural Resource Center built by the Diocese of Butuan and Caritas Philippines in cooperation with the DA Caraga Regional Office.
The center, established last year in Barangay Pigdaulan in this city, has nurseries, seed bank and storage, solar driers, herbal garden, forage production, indigenous fish production sites, and a training center for farmers and fisher folk.
The center is the first of its kind in the region.
During the inauguration, Yap and other agriculture officials also signed a memorandum of agreement with different farmers’ groups for the launching of a sustainable agricultural program in the region.
Under this program, the DA will ensure the development of farm-to-market roads, post-harvest facilities, technology, irrigation or water supply needs, and other linkages to the markets.
