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By Prince Golez, Manila Reporter
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MANILA – For his presidency to succeed, President Rodrigo Duterte must ensure the increase of farmers’ income, according to Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan.
Pangilinan, citing a Philippine Institute of Development Studies report, said that 66 percent of the country’s poor live in rural areas.
Off-farm employment, like running a sari-sari store or driving a tricycle, accounts 70 percent of rural income, he added.
“The premise here is that if we really wish to reach a developed nation status, say in 10 years to 15 years, we are going to have to address that 21 percent who are the poorest of the poor,” the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food said.
Noting that the Duterte administration is seeking to increase per capita income to $4,000 by 2022, Pangilinan, lamenting that coconut farmers here only earn an annual average of P23,000, said the government should determine its desired target for farmers’ income.
In Vietnam, for example, their government sets up income benchmarks for their farmers to gauge the success of an intervention, he said.
Pangilinan noted: “We can have investments in agriculture. We can have bigger investments in irrigation projects, but ultimately we will have to benchmark incomes as to whether or not lives are improving and poverty has decreased.”
The national government has also been encouraged to support the Sagip Saka bill, which aims to provide tax incentives to privately-held companies that donate post-harvest facilities to farming enterprises and buy directly from them.
His bill, the senator stressed, would move Filipino farmers away from subsistence farming and toward farm enterprise management and development./PN
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