WHILE Western Visayas’ economy in 2020 contracted by 9.7 percent from its 6.3 percent growth in 2019, its agriculture, forestry, and fishing (AFF) sectors posted a positive growth of 6.2 percent, sharing 19.9 percent to the region’s economy.
In fact, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority, Region 6 has the fastest growth rate in AFF among the country’s regions. This is a very encouraging news in this time of pandemic that has devastating consequences in our economy.
The Philippines is basically an agricultural country, although through the years vast swaths of agricultural lands have been converted to industrial, commercial or residential use. Still, agriculture remains an economic driver, and thus holds the key to the country’s economic development and progress.
But what is the future of Philippine agriculture?
What makes this concern doubly significant is the recent study of international advocacy group Oxfam, warning that rice yield in the Philippines will drop from 50 percent to 70 percent because of climate change. It said rice-producing countries like the Philippines will be hardest hit by climate change, as a one percent rise in temperature will result in a 10 percent drop in rice production every year from hereon.
It is time for the government to invest in the real economy and focus on how to improve Philippine agriculture. At present, the government’s policy makes the country overly dependent on imported rice. It brings in cheap rice to augment the country’s food supply, instead of initiating programs that will actually help boost rice production and for the country to achieve the status of being rice self-sufficient.
Farmers are concerned on how the government deals with, say, a food crisis, the poor performance of the agriculture sector in the face of the global economic crisis and climate change which adversely affected the farmers. The agriculture sector experiences slower growth due to several factors, including climate change.
