IN HER RECENT State of the Region Address, Regional Development Council chairperson and Antique governor Rhodora Cadiao said Western Visayas’ agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors decelerated to negative 1.4 percent growth from 8.8 percent in 2017. She attributed this to the negative 1.6 percent growth in the agriculture and forestry subsectors and the negative 0.6 percent growth of the fishing subsector.
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 by 2020 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 a must for the government to promote the welfare and interest of farmers and our 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.
It is time for the government to invest in the real economy and focus on how to improve Philippine agriculture.
