For decades, our family has been farming a couple of rice lands in Sibalom, the rice granary town of Antique. Unfortunately, I have to sell the lands because our family is giving up on farming, realizing that it has become a losing business venture.
I share President Marcos Jr.’s sentiment that farming is not just a livelihood, but an existential imperative, and that food is not just a trade commodity, but the very basis of human security. I wish to offer ideas that can contribute to the success of the proposed Masagana 150 and Masagana 200 programs that aim to increase rice production, taking into account the lessons learned from the success and failure of Masagana 99.
The most significant problem plaguing our agriculture is the lack of young people to replace aging farmers that on average are in their late 50s. Unless the problem is resolved, there will not be enough farmers in the next 12 years. Enrollment in agriculture studies has declined to only 3 percent of the total enrollment in higher education. Young people are reluctant to take up farming for livelihood because they have no access to land, capital, technology, markets, and other resources. Who then will work the land to feed our ever-growing population?
The only way to persuade farmers not to abandon, and young people to take up farming, is for the government to demonstrate that indeed there is abundance, and farmers can become wealthy through agriculture.
Many of our farmers today are marginal farmers that traditionally raise crops mainly for family livelihood. They are incapable of taking on risks in farming or managing their finances. The Department of Agriculture (DA) must take drastic measures to promote marginal farmers by engaging them in agribusiness or commercial farming, where they will raise crops on a large scale to sell them and make a profit.
Commercial farming needs big capital investment, large-scale farms, dependable irrigation systems, environment-friendly farm inputs, innovative technologies, modern equipment, farm-to-market roads, and reliable transportation to produce high yields.
The most practical and convenient strategy for the DA to transform marginal farming into commercial farming is to organize farmers into cooperatives. Landowners, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, market middlemen or traders, and capital lenders can pool their lands, capital, and other resources in cooperatives as a legal entity, and engage in commercial farming. The DA shall provide and direct all organizational, technical, and financial assistance and support to the cooperatives instead of individual farmers.
The National Food Authority, which is mandated to ensure stable supply and price of rice, and maintain an optimal level of national rice inventory, shall buy rice solely from local farmers, primarily the cooperatives.
The cooperatives shall aggressively persuade young people, especially children of member landowners and farmers, to study agriculture by providing them, without repayment, total financial support including stipend for basic living expenses. At the completion of the study, graduates shall be required to take up paid farming jobs with the cooperatives for a minimum of two years. Should graduates decline the jobs, they shall be obliged to repay the stipend given to them during their study.
The DA shall explore the possibility of expanding the hectarage of rice farms while raising the yields per hectare. In collaboration with the Land Management Bureau, the DA shall identify alienable and disposable lands of the public domain, and consider acquiring privately owned lands, which are vacant, idle, or underutilized for development into productive farms and use by the cooperatives.
The Philippine Rice Research Institute shall develop and promote varieties of rice suitable for organic or natural farming, to avoid the use of fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and other farm inputs that are damaging to the environment, especially those derived from imported petroleum.
Transforming marginal farming into commercial farming requires a significant change in traditional mindset, massive marshaling of human, financial and other resources, as well as support from various agencies of the national government. Nonetheless, the requirements are undoubtedly doable.
God has blessed our country with everything needed for our people to live a life of abundance. Our country is rich in natural resources, and our people are talented and hardworking. For many of our people to live in poverty is unthinkable and is never acceptable.
Apolonio Espanola,
Molo, Iloilo City