The Philippines has been exerting efforts to attract foreign investors to come to and invest in our country and help us solve our nagging unemployment problem. But Filipino workers are still scattered and working throughout the world, proving that those efforts have made little headway.
Nowadays, governments of developing and progressive countries are also wooing investments from their neighbors. Under our present condition, it’s no use to compete with them.
The wiser and more practical way for our government to solve the unemployment problem is to go agricultural. We have abundant idle and balding public lands that could be distributed to the hundreds of thousands of jobless Filipinos. With government financial support, our idle lands can be converted into a dollar-earning industry. Let us require the new landowners to plant trees and raise wildlife, etc. Let us restore the long-lost glory of our mountains.
Ten to 15 years from the start of this undertaking, we can be the No. 1 exporter of agricultural products throughout the world. Foreign investors may now come in, and agriculture can then become one of the country’s major employment generators.
Once we achieve all these, government will reap some collateral benefits: One, it would be easier to resettle informal settlers to the provinces thereby decongesting the metro cities and perhaps reducing the rate of crimes in those places. Another and most promisingly striking is, with the greening of our deforested mountains, the multibillion-peso devastation caused by every strong typhoon can be lessened and, at least, we can a little bit restore a balanced ecology in our country and help reduce the effect of global warming.
—ROLAND B. BAGUINAT,
retired enlisted serviceman,
Philippine Air Force