When provinces take charge

A few provinces that I’ve visited recently give me some hope about reviving our troubled agriculture sector from the sorry state it’s in now. Two words sum up the sector’s problem: productivity (i.e., lack of it), and complacency.

Cross-country data on total factor productivity (TFP) growth in agriculture compiled by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) tell a sad story of how ours has lagged behind our Asean peers over the past half-century, or since the 1960s. Not only was TFP growth slower than in our neighbors; it has actually fallen since 2011 (at least until 2016, the last year USDA had comparative data). This is what makes our food so expensive, more than even in rich countries with much higher purchasing power. Persistent insulation (“protection”) of our domestic market from the discipline of market competition made things worse over time, as it removed all impetus to match our neighbors’ productivity and lower costs. Complacency in government, producers, and traders stunted Philippine agriculture, and what we need is a massive boost in farm productivity—not just producing more, but more importantly, getting much more out of a given amount of land, labor, and capital. That is what TFP growth means, and only that would bring down our food prices if we are not to rely on imports.

As for the future outlook, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is, there is hope. Over the past year, I’ve traveled around the country with a study team to see how well our provinces are helping their farmers and fishers improve their productivity and incomes. The work was commissioned by the Department of Agriculture through its Agricultural Training Institute (DA-ATI), spurred by the renewed mandate for devolution coming out of the Mandanas-Garcia ruling—the Supreme Court decision that further raised local governments’ allocations from national tax revenues. In response, the DA has rolled out the province-led agriculture and fisheries extension system (Pafes), which tasks provincial governments to take the driver’s seat to coordinate their municipal agriculture offices in serving the technical needs of their farmers and fishers. It has been heartening to witness provinces seriously taking the responsibility to heart. This could well be the key to unlocking the productivity potentials of our farms and fisheries when the units of governance closest to the problems on the ground find and implement tailored solutions based on peculiar needs, rather than one-size-fits-all fixes from the top.

The province of Albay is a case in point. Its past and present chief executives have given ample attention and budgets to its agriculture and fisheries sector. In 2016, the provincial leadership pursued the establishment of a 15-hectare facility that has since become the Albay Farmers’ Bounty Village or AFBVille, a complex that houses the amply staffed Albay Provincial Agriculture Office, and the Pafes Center or Pafec. The latter is the physical convergence point for the various entities collaborating under the Pafes, from the national and local governments, academic and research institutions, private sector, and civil society organizations. There are also facilities for training, research, laboratory analyses, tissue culture, food processing (for dairy, cacao, pili, mushroom, and more), packaging, and marketing, including a retail outlet for selling farmers’ fresh and processed products. AFBVille has become a venue for better communication, coordination, cooperation, and collaboration across the various stakeholders aiming to improve opportunities for the farmers and fishers of the province.

Albay also deploys some 20-30 “community facilitators” all around the province, tasked to establish close coordination with the municipal and city LGUs in the execution of development initiatives. These community facilitators help oil the Pafes machinery, as they pursue provincial-municipal-city coordination in their daily work. Albay and the Bicol region also boasts a well-organized network of learning sites for agriculture and Farmers Field Schools, vital cogs in the extension system.

Beyond Albay, there are other provinces we’ve visited where the leaders similarly accord the right priority, attention, and budget to the farm and fisheries sector. The bad news is, we’ve also seen governors and mayors who treat their farm and fishery sectors with apparent neglect. Their agriculture offices are underbudgeted, poorly equipped, and understaffed, mostly on job order or contractual engagements.

Moving forward, it’s our local chief executives who must be held to account for the success or failure of the sector that I’ve long argued to be the backbone of the Philippine economy.

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