DIAGNOSIS

 “Hulog ng Langit,” “Biyaya ng Maykapal” are

phrases which indicate the kind of mindset
Filipinos have. We always look up to the
heavens for our salvation from poverty. We
"Rooted in rich soil and nurtured by always hope that one day, the blessings
generations, Philippine agriculture sustains a would fall from the heavens and bring relief
nation's growth, weaving a tapestry of flavors to our sufferings as a people.
that celebrate both tradition and innovation.  In agriculture and fisheries, this mindset is
reflective of how we lap up every new
Do you know any superstitious product and idea presented to us in glowing
beliefs related to farming in our anecdotes and narratives.
country?  The “Golden Kuhol” was introduced to the
country as a priceless source of protein and
 Planting during a Full Moon the first recipients of the breeding materials
 Avoiding Cutting Bamboo at Night from overseas did not even want to share it.
 Whistling at Night Today, it is a pest to the rice farmers.
 Singing While Planting  The “Jathropha”OR KASLA received a P1-B
 Offering to Diwata (Nature Spirits) support fund supposedlybecause it
 Planting After a Funeral promised a rich source of bio-diesel which
 Using Red Threads would earn millions for the farmers. It ended
up as a big flop and earned the anger and ire
of the farmers who felt they were duped.
“WE ARE COUNTRY OF IRONIES”  The list of the expensive but fruitless
experiments is long:cotton, ramie, Asian
 The Philippines has 6 months of rains, carp, Taiwan hito and many others.
typhoons and is inundated by endless floods.  The endemic and native products which the
But after 3 months of dry spell, we cry Philippines could offer to the world and
“Water!” dominate the market have been neglected,
 The Philippines is ranked No. 5 among the sometimes even forgotten.
world’s countries with the longest  The Philippines used to be Number 1 in
shorelines at 39,285 kilometers but we are Coconut. Thailand has overtaken us. In many
not the top fisheries, aqua and marine stores in the United States of America,
products producer. coconut products from Thailand are sold.
 In fact, we still import some fisheries and  Abaca is endemic to the Philippines but we
marine products and our fingerlings for the have neglected the product and now
national fish “Bangus” and shrimps Ecuador which got its planting materials of
 Rice is our staple food and the foremost the Manila Hemp from the Philippines is
research body for the crop - the fast-tracking its Abaca development
International Rice Research Institute - is program. “Bangus” is our national fish but
based in Los Baños, Laguna yet we are one of we are importingour fingerlings from
the biggest importers of rice in the world. Taiwan. Worse, we are losing the foreign
 There are 247 large rivers in the country, market to them when our “Bangus” is
thousands of tributaries, creeks, springs, described by foreign buyers are best in
watershed areas and rich aquifers but only quality.
1.4-million of the estimated 3.1-million  “Milagrosa,” the aromatic rice found only in
hectares planted to rice are served by the Philippines has been developed by
irrigation water. Thailand and now marketed worldwide as
 The Philippines is a land of verdant plains Jasmine Rice. Worse, they have claimed the
and lush vegetation ideal for animal feeds brand name as theirs.
but we are a heavy importer of beef and  Banana, pineapple, Durian, Malunggay,
99% of dairy and milk requirements come Mangosteen, Cacao, Coffee, Rubber, Oil Palm,
from foreign lands. Carageenan, Tuna, shrimps, crabs and dried
 The country has a land so fertile that one fish are high-value products the Philippines
Israeli agriculturist once said that the could excel in but these sectors have largely
Philippines could produce enough food to been left by government to fend for
feed the world and seas so wide and islands themselves.
so plentiful we could not even get the exact  Pork, Chicken, Beef and ducks are other high
number. Yet the poorest sectors of society value commodities the Philippines could
are in farming and fisheries. produce in great volume because of the
availability of feed materials - grains, copra
 meal, fish meal, oyster and seashells,
molasses and hay -but we are importing
these from other countries.

SOLUTION
Step 1: A National Color-Coded Agriculture and
Fisheries Map;
Step 2: A National Food Consumption
Quantification Study;
Step 3: An institutional restructuring and
paradigm resetting for the Department of • Agribusiness also started in key export crops
Agriculture and its officials and employees; (e.g., bananas and pineapple), with coconut and
Step 4: An intensive technology updating and sugarcane enjoying a worldwide commodity
sharing, modernization and mechanization price boom.
program; • However, growth retreated in the 1980s and
Step 5: An easy access financing program for 1990s but recovered in the 2000s due to another
farmers, fishermen and agriculture and fisheries price surge in the latter part of the decade.
stakeholders; However, in the 2010s, growth receded to just
Step 6: A strategic and effective post-harvest, under 2 percent.
storage and processing facility;
Step 7: A government-initiated and supported Key Driver of Growth in Agriculture in the
aggressive marketing campaign especially for Philippines
high value crops in foreign markets; • From 2010 to 2019, the poultry industry had
Step 8: A coordinated program with other been the key driver of growth in agriculture,
agencies of government to ensure the protection while crops have stagnated (Table 2).
and preservation of water sources, especially Meanwhile, fisheries further contracted in 2014–
watershed; 2018, faring even worse than crops.
Step 9: A relentless campaign for the
enforcement of agricultural and fisheries laws,
especially on land conversion and illegal fishing;
Step 10: Re-introduction of basic agriculture in
the primary and elementary grades of the
Philippine schools system with emphasis on the • Climate change has been a major factor in
value of the land, water and seas and the these low and erratic trends, while capture
maximum but prudent utilization of these fisheries have been mostly affected by
resources.Philippine agriculture: Current state, overfishing and the destruction of natural
challenges, and ways forward. habitats.
• Even livestock has been affected by the African
Growth in agricultural swine fever (ASF) pandemic, a form of
• Across the globe, agriculture has grown at environmental risk that has caused shortages in
varying levels. Since 2000, China has recorded 4 supply and soaring prices of pork since 2019.
percent growth, followed closely behind by India
and Indonesia. Meanwhile, developing countries Impact of Agriculture to the economy
in East Asia and the Pacific have grown an Agriculture was the biggest employer of the
average of 3.6 percent in the 2010s while Sub- economy in the mid-1990s but has since given
Saharan Africa reached an even faster pace than way to services (Figure 2).
East Asia and the Pacific.

Growth in agricultural GVA

In the Philippines, agriculture started growing at

an adequate pace in the 1960s and 1970s
(Figure 1), thanks to new technologies at the  Its share in employment had been
time (e.g., the Green Revolution seeds). consistently declining until 2019, but with
 the COVID- 19 pandemic, there was a  However, the pathway to the sustained
reversal in trend. growth of agriculture is not to restrain this
 Its share in employment had been out-migration but to raise the productivity
consistently declining until 2019, but with of agricultural workers.
the COVID- 19 pandemic, there was a
reversal in trend. Factors of Production: Capital
 The Philippine agricultural exports have
lagged far behind its Southeast Asian  A potent source of labor productivity
neighbors (Figure 3). increase is mechanization, which entails
capital investments. However, capital
formation in agriculture has been limited.
 An estimated 62 percent of small farmers
and fisherfolk who incur debt are able to
borrow from formal sources (Galang
2020). Conversely, 38 percent do not.
Moreover, a significant proportion of other
small farmers and fisherfolk may have
resorted to selffinance given the voluminous
requirements of availing a bank loan
(whereas the informal lender may charge
high interest).
Issues and challenges
Low growth in agriculture is ultimately traceable Factors of Production: Risk
to the slow expansion in the factors of
production.  One reason why banks shun agriculture is
the high risk of recovering loans. A
Factors of Production: Land spectacular example of this is the steep
contraction in hog inventory in 2020–2021
 The Food and Agriculture Organization due to ASF, which led to a spike in pork
(2020) estimates the country’s arable land prices in 2021 (PIDS forthcoming).
at 12.44 million hectares (ha). Since the  Agricultural production is risky and
rural population has been growing, farm unfamiliar to many urban-based loan
sizes have also been declining,hence, there is officers. One instrument to reduce risk and
no room for growth in this factor. improve agricultural finance is through
 Likewise, fragmentation has also agricultural insurance, which is deeply
prevented the realization of economies of intertwined with credit. Many farmers in the
scale, exacerbated by the Comprehensive Philippines have become aware of the
Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), which agricultural insurance program owing to its
has broken up farmlands and suppressed linkage with credit provision (Reyes et al.
land rental markets toward reconsolidation 2019).
of operations. Using farm household panel
data, Adamopoulos and Restuccia (2020) Factors of Production: Infrastructure
found that CARP had reduced average  Aside from private capital, public capital
farm size by 34 percent, agricultural stock, particularly rural infrastructure, is
productivity by 17 percent, and the share also a key determinant of agricultural
of landless individuals by 20 percent. growth. However, the country has been
 The weak enforcement of the CARP has underinvesting in infrastructure. According
inadvertently prevented a more severe to Llanto (2012), poor rural infrastructure is
productivity impact. It is estimated that a contributor to low agricultural
productivity would have dropped by 26 productivity.
percent under full enforcement of the
program. Factors of Production: Resource base
 Agriculture faces several threats to its long-
Factors of Production: Labor term sustainability. Fish stocks and marine
ecosystems have been disrupted by
 The number of workers in agriculture has overfishing and human activity, resulting in
been declining both in relative and absolute the declining capture fishery output.
terms (Briones 2017a) up to 2019.  Meanwhile, the expansion of agricultural
 Population growth, diminishing farm size, lands has contributed to the declining forest
and declining relative incomes in agriculture cover and biodiversity. Agriculture also faces
have incentivized the shift out of agriculture worsening climate extremes and a declining
 availability of water owing to increased been found ineffective in rural development
domestic and industrial use (Sajise et al. (Lopez and Galinato 2007; Briones 2012).
2018; Wilson and Lasco 2018).  Documentation of the benefits received will
entail a reliable database of beneficiaries,
Factors of Production: Public spending i.e., the Registry System for Basic Sectors
in Agriculture (RSBA). An operational
 The budget for agriculture has been high and definition of farmers, farmworkers, and
rising in recent decades. The total budget for fisherfolk is needed to ensure that
agriculture in 2018 was PHP 142.7 billion, government programs cater to the right
which is about 8.9 percent of the sector’s beneficiaries. The RSBA must be updated
gross value added, up from 7.4 percent in regularly, at least every three years, given
2017. Obligations for the sector rose further the dynamic nature of agriculture (Reyes
to PHP 147.33 billion in 2020 before and Gloria 2017).
withdrawing to PHP 142.5 billion in 2021.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS: CREDIT AND
RISK

 To address the financial needs of small

farmers and fisherfolk, the regulatory
environment should be open to innovative
means of delivering financial services to the
rural areas, including strengthening of links
between agro-input suppliers and financial
institutions. Geron et al. 2016).
 Likewise, an IEC campaign may be launched
to inform and educate farmers on the
advantages and benefits of agricultural
insurance, which could promote a sustained
expansion of agricultural credit.

AGRIBUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

 A pivotal intervention to boost TFP growth

is promoting research and development
(R&D), which requires a tremendously
ramped-up level of investment. Initially,
national agricultural research and extension
systems must synchronize their R&D
activities with the wide ranging and fast-
However, despite years of high and rising changing requirements of enterprises in the
budgets for agriculture, government programs agribusiness value chain (Briones 2008).
have little to show in terms of concrete  At the level of farmers and fisherfolk,
outcomes. extensive capacity building for cooperatives
and other grassroots enterprises is essential
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS: PUBLIC for programs to be effective.
EXPENDITURE PROGRAMS  Agrarian reform needs to transition from
 Public expenditure programs need to be redistribution of landholdings to linking
reoriented to boost the sector’s long-term beneficiary organizations to agribusiness
growth, which entails deep governance arrangements based on active land
reforms. As the biggest spender of public markets, secure property rights, and an
funds for agriculture, DA must lead the way efficient land administration system.
in doing these reforms, mainly in the form of
performance-based planning,
management, monitoring, and
accountability of its programs.
 For instance, Israel (2012) recommends
pursuing suggestions of audit agencies on
addressing anomalies in financial
transactions.
 Similarly, spending on production inputs,
mostly in the form of private goods, has