ALMOST a year ago, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., in his first State of the Nation Address (SONA), highlighted the importance of agriculture in pushing for growth and employment in the country.
“One of the main drivers of our push for growth and employment will be in the agricultural sector,” he said.
As concurrent Secretary of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Marcos laid out plans to counter two problems besetting Philippine agriculture for the short- and long-term.
“Ang mga suliraning agarang mararamdaman ng ating mga kababayan ay ang posibilidad ng tuloy-tuloy na pagsipa ng presyo ng pagkain at kakulangan sa suplay ng ating pagkain,” he said.
As such, Marcos announced that the Department of Agriculture under his watch will work double time to address the gap in food supply and spike in prices.
Well, after nearly year, what has happened? Unmet promises and expectations abound.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is a must for the government to promote the welfare and interest of farmers and our agriculture.
