CEBU—Providing food for every Juan’s table remains a challenge, as the Philippine agriculture industry is yet to achieve fully the national food sufficiency goal.
“In our development as a nation, when we’re trying to get a good grasp of how our country’s agriculture sector may be affected by—or should respond to— emerging trends and challenges, we need not look far. Right in our own backyard, the issue of improving productivity, for one, continues to hound us—a compelling concern, if we may say, because of its ramifications ultimately impacting on our drive toward food security,” Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said in a statement delivered by Director for the Office of the Undersecretary for Operations Leo P. Cañeda during the recent 60th anniversary celebration of Atlas Fertilizer Corp. (AFC).
This, he added, is as compelling as addressing other issues, such as the well-being of stakeholders, especially the small farmers and rural development.
Agricultural issues, particularly soil management, has never been as difficult and demanding as it is today, according to the Department of Agriculture (DA) chief.
He attributed this to the growing population, dwindling and nutrient-drained land resources, persistent pests and diseases, and more frequent and deadlier calamities due to climate change.
Considering the various challenges that confront the agricultural sector at present, he calls for intensified research and development efforts to develop productivity-enhancing and cost-efficient technologies.
“We have been pushing for sustainable agriculture. Technologies should increase production, but should be safe for the farmer, the environment and the consumer. We have to ensure that farms remain productive now and for generations to come,” Piñol said.
More work to be done
ATTAINING the 100-percent food-sufficiency objective of both the national government and local agriculture industry requires hard labor, Cañeda conceded.
Taking a cue from the outcome of the Asean Agribusiness Summit that took place in Pasay City on October 4, he said there was a reiteration of the Philippine agriculture’s performance vis-à-vis that of its counterparts in Southeast Asia.
“We have a lot of catching up to do,” Cañeda told the BusinessMirror on the sidelines of AFC’s founding celebration. “It’s a working progress for the Philippines. We hope to be able to get there when the time comes.”
The current Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022—the first medium-term plan to ensure that the long-term visions for the country by 2040 will be accomplished—seeks to expand economic opportunities in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries (AFF) sector.
Under this blueprint, the country’s GDP is targeted to grow between 7 percent and 8 percent in the medium term. It, likewise, seeks to achieve a gross value added (GVA) target for agriculture of 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent in the medium term.
“So we’re still at it, except that we need a lot of catching up to do. We need to be able to live up to our own expectations with regard to how agriculture should grow in the coming years,” he said.
To the merit of the industry’s improved performance to date, agriculture recovered with a 6.3-percent growth in the second quarter of 2017, from a 2-percent decline during the previous year.
The long-dormant sector turned out to be the surprise of the period, as it contributed 0.5 percentage-point to the overall 6.5-percent GDP growth.
Subsectors palay, corn, sugarcane and poultry, as well as agricultural services, all surged, while forestry increased by 32.2 percent from a decrease of 27.5 percent in 2016. On the contrary, fishing dropped by 2.9 percent from last year’s level.
Meanwhile, export data revealed that agricultural machineries rose by 57 percent from April to June 2017, compared to negative 51 percent during the same period in 2016.
Underfertilized
INDUSTRY think tanks would agree that the country’s soil is underfertilized, such that productivity is affected in varying degrees by the so-called factors of production like the seed type and land preparation, as well as water, nutrient and pest management, among others.
“As you may have known, our vetting of productivity has in many instances been based on the application of these factors. The farms which have complied with our standards or ‘checks’ have generally performed better compared to those which have not,” Piñol noted.
All of the DA’s recommended standards across commodities are science-based, empirically documented and backed by field trials, as norms would dictate, while trends in productivity have somehow ran parallel with the level of use of fertilizer.
“So this is where balanced crops-specific and soil-specific fertilization comes in,” Cañeda pointed out.
Agricultural yields were reported to have scaled new heights, even on a par with the experience of other countries, especially in Southeast Asia.
If at all, as experience again would show, all the efforts to increase more of the productivity were only stalled by comparatively higher cost of production, thus, effectively negating whatever productivity gains were achieved, and how these gains could have improved the welfare of the local farmers.
“This, [along with] improving our operating efficiency through lower per-unit cost of production, remains our biggest hurdle which we hope to overcome through our continuing development partnership with stakeholders, such as your group and your industry,” the DA secretary said.
Cost efficiency in the county is so wanting, whereas it takes even double the price of whatever other countries are able to accomplish in producing free rice, corn and other vegetables.
“So cost efficiency is very important. We need to address that. And, hopefully, this will impact on productivity. Because no amount of productivity will bring us to higher levels of food security or whole development if the basic issue of cost efficiency is not frontally and sufficiently addressed,” Cañeda said.
For Piñol, this can be an uphill battle to engage all players with stakes in rural and agricultural development.
“But we can start somewhere. Indeed, it is only by increasing our efficiency that we can secure a gateway toward increased competitiveness and greater involvement and access in a globalizing economy,” he said.
On the DA’s part under his leadership, Piñol pledged to lift the agriculture sector to a higher level of development existence, as evident in the actions they have taken in support of their 10-point agenda, focusing on agriculture road map, research and development, irrigation development, land-use plan, hybrid rice technology development, farm mechanization and farmers’ access to financial programs.
“We have been walking the talk, as they say, guided by this agenda and the leverage afforded by our budgetary and manpower support,” he said.
Food on the table
AS the Philippines, together with the rest of the globe, is set to observe World Food Day (WFD) on October 16, Piñol said that this year’s event reaffirms anew what can be achieved as a result of self-sustaining economy and countryside growth.
“This means that if only we can use our country toward more food security and prosperity, especially in the rural areas, we just might be able to mitigate if not altogether arrest movement of some of our countrymen to go elsewhere in search of the proverbial greener pasture,” the agriculture secretary said.
More and more Filipinos would not have gambled to go abroad just to ensure their families back home do not live miserably with an empty stomach had their motherland is fertile enough to offer them vast opportunities.
“The fruits of development in the countryside will keep our people home-based instead of being pushed out or pushed away by unfavorable local conditions,” Piñol said.
The 2017 WFD is themed “Change the Future of Migration—Invest in Food Security and Rural Development.”