Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan has urged the Department of Agriculture (DA) to bring its extension services to the provinces and help farmers there benefit from government interventions in the agriculture sector.

In a meeting with the University of the Philippines-Los Baños’ (UPLB) executive committee on Saturday, August 2, the senator emphasized the need for a consolidated and well-organized farmer groups that can access vital government programs on financing, mechanization, post-harvest facilities, crop insurance and market linkages.

Pangilinan lamented that the DA currently only has regional offices, and Region 4A (Calabarzon) is covered solely by the DA’s regional office in Lipa, Batangas.

He said it is high-time for the government to strengthen and organize farmers into cooperatives to ensure that government interventions in the agriculture sector are maximized and farm productivity is improved.

Pangilinan said all agricultural programs will depend on the absorption capacity of farmer-organizations. He warned that any form of government intervention will fail if farmers are not organized and capacitated.

“And considering how our extension services are such nearly non-existent, how will your farmers absorb the technology, the interventions when they are not organized? These are the challenges,” Pangilinan said upon being presented with Project SARAI, a program that aims to develop a national crop forecasting and monitoring system to counter the impact of climate change.

“How do you strengthen the capacity of your farmer-beneficiaries who are the weakest link in all of these?,” Pangilinan asked.

“How rooted are we in the reality that farmers will not be able to—unless organized and capacitated—absorb the intervention that we hope will improve our productivity and our ability to address food security?”

A farmer himself, Pangilinan acknowledged the challenges in organizing farmers, which he said he had been trying to do in Alfonso, Cavite for the past three years.

The lawmaker recalled a recent visit to Taiwan, where a 45-hectare farm with state-of-the-art, solar-powered in-site cold storage facility and organic fertilizer equipment was being managed by a 24-member cooperative.

Pangilinan said he marveled at the “grassroots” extent of government support in Taiwan, which has a population of only around 23 million, underscoring that farmer cooperatives must be in smaller groups to maximize government interventions and scale up their production.

“Unless that’s the kind of outcome that we want in our interventions… again, it’s the devolving of extension (services) to at least the provincial level,” the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Food and Agrarian Reform.

As now chairman of the Senate agriculture committee, Pangilinan said he intends to “shake things up” with the agriculture sector.