TO boost the number of youths pursuing a career in agriculture, a new bill was filed in the House of Representatives, which aims to provide living and transportation allowance to qualified students enrolled in agriculture-related courses.
House Bill (HB) No. 7572 was filed by Davao City 1st District Representative Paolo Duterte, Benguet Rep. Eric Yap and ACT-CIS Party-list Rep. Edvic Yap.
The proposed legislation aims to provide subsidies to children of qualified indigent farmers who will pass admission requirements for agriculture courses and other related fields of study in state universities and colleges (SUCs) and other local universities and colleges (LUCs).
The said incentives will be on top of the free tuition already provided by Republic Act 10931 or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act.
The authors of HB 7572 stressed the importance of drawing in more young Filipinos to agriculture to counter the decline in the number of workers in the farming sector.
Citing data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), they pointed out the share to total employment of the agriculture sector declined to 22.5 percent (10.6 million) in October 2022, from 24.5 percent (9.7 million) in October 2020 and 24.6 percent (10.77 million in October 2021).
PSA also reported that in terms of skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers, the numbers continue to drop from 14.2 percent (5.7 million) in October 2020 and 12.4 percent (5.4 million) in October 2021 to 11.8 percent (5.6 million) in October of last year.
Duterte said the bill would also help bring in more technical innovation in the agriculture sector.
The lawmaker pointed out agriculture jobs are not only limited to farming, but also include technical fields such as biosystems engineering, agribusiness management, agricultural biotechnology, agricultural economics, and fisheries technology.
“We need young Filipinos who are exposed to today’s technologies to consider agriculture as a viable career. The youth’s innovative spirit, their enthusiasm to change the way we think or do things is what we need right now to reinvigorate our agriculture sector. Providing farmers’ children the educational support they need will encourage them to pursue agriculture and other related courses,” Duterte explained.