WITH the start of the rainy season, Secretary
of Agriculture Proceso Alcala has called on the nation’s farmers to plant early
this year. The El Niño dry spell continues to threaten Philippine agriculture,
he said. It is now weak but it is expected to become moderate until August,
persist until December, and then start weakening in early 2016.
Thus,
while the Philippine monsoon season has begun, with rain-bearing winds now
blowing from the southwest, they can give way at any time to the El Niño’s dry
winds blowing in from the central Pacific in the east. Thus Secretary Alcala’s
advice to farmers to plant now to take advantage of the intermittent rains.
Should the El Niño threat intensify any time in the coming months, he said, the
Department of Agriculture is ready to undertake cloud seeding operations and to
install water and solar pumps in farm communities that are in greatest need.
Despite
the El Niño threat that now threatens the Philippine agriculture, it remains
the most crucial sector in the country’s economic growth. The agricultural sector
occupies almost a third of the country’s land area and has a third of the
country’s labor force. Yet it contributes only a tenth of the country’s annual
growth as measured in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The country imports more
agricultural products than it exports. It is way behind its fellow ASEAN
nations Thailand and Vietnam from which it imports most of its rice needs.
It should
not be like this, the Vegetable Importers, Exporters, and Vendors Association
(VIEVA) of the Philippines said this week as it pressed the government to move
more decisively in agricultural development in the face of ASEAN economic
integration starting in the coming year. The government has the plans, it has
the budget, but agriculture needs a truly coordinated program of action between
the government and the private sector for it to truly flourish and be the
springboard for the Philippines becoming a true Asian economic tiger.
A major
problem facing Filipino farmers, the association said, is lack of financing.
Banks regard farmers as high-risk borrowers and they have limited knowledge on
bank loan processes. Farmers also need assistance in new technology,
high-yielding crops, and other advances in agriculture. They need assistance in
establishing reliable market linkages.
In this
last year of the Aquino administration, it should look into undertaking an
all-out drive to make Philippine agriculture the major economic engine that it
should be. We have the land and other needed resources, we have the technology,
we have the people, and, as the VIEVA pointed out, we have the budget. It would
reach and benefit the biggest and neediest sector of Philippine society, and
provide the biggest step towards a truly inclusive economic growth for the
country.
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