AVANT GARDENER

The agriculture and fisheries sector continues to decline. Last year it accounted for only 2.9 percent of the nation’s GDP, the lowest in five years. This, despite increasing and insistent calls to strengthen the industry amid continuously rising food prices.

Despite alarms raised about the dire effects a food shortage will have on the country, there seems to be little done to increase growth and development among local farmers and industry insiders, probably because it isn’t seen as “high value” or to put it crassly, “sexy.” This is faulty thinking and if left unchecked, will be the cause of a severely weakened Philippines. 

Agriculture is the backbone of the economy, particularly “in economic recovery efforts, especially in improving food supply and creating livelihood,” Former Secretary of the Department of Finance (DoF) Margarito "Gary" Teves said in his Talking Points on PH Food, Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Sector. “Every one billion worth of new investment in agriculture could create at least 16,000 new jobs for the poor.”

Unfortunately, several factors continue to keep the industry from performing at an optimum. Some in Teves' list include fragmented farmlands, which make it hard to leverage economies of scale to make farming profitable; a declining workforce due to the sector’s (accurate) reputation for low and unstable wages, among other injustices; a lack of support from financial institutions that force many farmers to borrow from loan sharks, keeping them in a cycle of debt and poverty which gets worse with every natural disaster or plunge in crop prices; and a lack of government support, particularly because of its’ rice-centric budget and lack of infrastructure and post-harvest facilities.

Post-harvest losses, in particular, make up a huge part of industry wastage. According to the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), in 2017, “post-harvest loss for fruits ranged from five to 48 percent, between 16 to 40 percent for vegetables, and 15 percent for grains (rice and corn),” which is “higher than the global average of 14 percent for both fruits and vegetables.”  Imagine how much lower food prices would be and how many more people would have access to fresh, nutritious food if this could be prevented. 
This is worrying, since it means not only does fresh produce go to waste, but the labor and inputs used to grow them, as well as potential profits, are lost as well. 

Factors that contribute to this massive amount of waste include poor post-harvest handling techniques and inadequate warehousing and cold storage, which hastens deterioration and results in poor quality produce which farmers have no choice but to sell at lower prices. Another is inadequate logistics that force many farmers to depend on middlemen, some of whom can be unscrupulous, for transport. According to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), logistics includes transportation, documentation, and various clearances, and can account for as much as 24-53 percent of wholesale prices and as much as five percent of retail prices. 

Another aspect that has a negative effect on food prices is hoarding, wherein products are “effectively taken out of circulation in the market.” This can lead to artificial shortages, which in turn can lead to an increase in prices. This doesn’t help either farmer or consumer, as consumers have to contend with high prices, while the high market prices usually don’t affect farmers’ earnings, as they rarely (if ever) are able to dictate the prices they sell their produce at. 

Something I’ve heard from many vegetable farmers is also a lack of a government planting calendar and planting plan that can help predict harvests and lessen instances of overproduction. 

The solution to a problem with such convoluted causes will not be simple, and will demand cooperation from different sectors, not to mention the political will to implement laws and policies and curb criminal activity. The private sector can support the industry by providing knowledge transfer, access to inputs, investing in storage and logistics, or simply buying local. 

The national government can further support the industry by engaging in actions such as increasing the agriculture budget in 2024 providing the Department of Agriculture (DA) can “show a significant improvement in its absorptive capacity to convince Congress to appropriate a larger budget for the department in succeeding years as well as by making agriculture development a key strategy in poverty reduction, which means engaging different departments such as the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in this endeavor. 

Revitalizing the agriculture industry affects not just the people who work in and with it, but everyone in the nation. A thriving agriculture industry is a key to national security. After all, everyone needs to eat, and a full populace is also a happy one.