Last week, we used the Philippine atis and the Taiwan shir-jia, also called si-kya, as an example of how technology and its proper use and propagation could assist Philippine agricultural production.
The matter of agricultural productivity is very important in advancing food security for a population which continues to grow. For years and years we seem to have defined food security in terms of being able to produce our own rice requirements. Self-sufficiency in rice has always been the be-all and end-all of government’s agricultural policy.
And yet it is in diversifying our product profile and increasing the incomes of our marginalized farmers that the future of our agriculture must be shaped. Unless farm incomes increase, there will be less and less young people interested in farming. Not only is agriculture not “sexy” enough to the youth. As small farms presently are, they simply do not generate enough income to sustain basic needs let alone give them enough disposable income.
The farmer slaves and scrimps, borrows and pawns practically everything to be able to send the son or daughter to become an OFW. The overseas worker phenomenon has become some kind of miracle cure for poverty so endemic.
Sadly, the foreign contract worker again slaves, and whatever is left after sending sustenance to their families back in the Philippines, the paltry savings he or she is able to keep, is later invested in low-income generating economic activities, such as a tricycle, or a jeepney, or a small store.
Thus the cycle of disinterest in farming continues. This imperils the nation’s food production.
On a macro level, the Philippines exports only 5 billion dollars of agricultural products, mostly bananas and pineapples, a little sugar, and coconut. On the other hand, we import some 10 to 11 billion dollars of farm produce each year.
And where, pray tell do we get the wherewithal to finance the 6 billion dollar difference between exports and imports? Why, the “katas ng OFW” of course.
Decades back, we broke up our big landed estates by legislation and distributed the land to tenants and farm workers, and we called this agrarian reform. Nothing wrong with that, except government it seems defined reform as purely a matter of land distribution.
Binigyan ng lupa ang magsasaka, pagkatapos, bahala na sila sa buhay nila.
Where the big estates (also referred to as “haciendas”) had economies of scale that generated enough capital to mechanize, the small landholdings had become dis-economies. Cooperative models, as in Israel’s “kibbutz”, or even neighboring Taiwan, were not replicated in our country. Farms became subsistence operations.
Balik sa isang kahig, isang tuka.
Were it not for the escape valve called overseas work, this country’s social volcano would have exploded long ago. Agrarian unrest and landlord exploitation in fact fuelled the unrest, mostly in Luzon, that was the Hukbalahap revolt right after the Japanese occupation. Many of our landlords just got their huge share of the farm output on the back of the labor of their “kasama” without attempting either farm modernization or social amelioration.
Last Friday, the Manila Economic and Cultural Office signed two memoranda of understanding in the southern city of Kaohsiung. One was with the National Kaohsiung Marine University, which would develop aquaculture training course modules for OFWs working in Taiwan. Meco would allocate funds for the training, some form of scholarship so that interested OFW’s would learn technical skills in aquaculture that they could put to good use when they retire from their jobs here. Instead of the usual jeepney or sari-sari store, both of which are fast becoming rendered obsolete by time, why not start with a small aquaculture farm? With the technology imparted and the management skills imbibed from the course, there is alternative livelihood.
Likewise, NKMU is offering five scholarship grant slots for employees of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources. Training the trainors, with the hope that the technology transfer is propagated back home.
The other MOU was with AGRIGAIA, which already has an upcoming project with Benguet State University on organic vegetable farming methods. They intend to expand into more demonstration farms, with Meco assisting in tying them up with state-owned agricultural colleges and universities.
The NGO would also develop training modules in agriculture courses for Taiwan-based OFW’s. Think of better atis farms, or malunggay propagation, or okra and ampalaya, which can be exported. And vegetable propagation which would increase food supply for domestic consumption and eventually cut the cost of food.
In a recent article I read, former agriculture secretary Willy Dar advocated developing an “entrepreneurial ecosystem involving most if not all smallholder farmers (towards) accelerating modernization and industrialization.”
The formula for the oft-repeated goal of inclusive growth through agri-preneurship is simple, according to Dar. It “consists of increasing productivity at the farm level; manufacturing or processing by agro-industrial firms and cooperatives; and tapping both the local and export markets.”
I have always maintained, in this column and elsewhere, that there are two areas where the country can focus its efforts on the economy: Agriculture and tourism. The first because so many of our poor are fishermen and farmers; the second because of our natural beauty and our natural friendliness.
At our representative office in Taiwan, we are taking some small steps towards contributing to what ought to be a concentrated national effort.