The Philippine Agriculture is characterized by “low productivity” caused by complex factors deeply rooted to culture and politics. This problem is becoming a social problem and require intervention from the national government, LGUs, along with research and academic institutions.
The ever increasing population and the decreasing agricultural land put pressure to the agriculture sector to improve productivity. The changing pattern of the climate has also challenged the sector to protect and ensure production . The reduction in tariff of imported agricultural products could spell doom to local producers unless they are ready to compete with the low prices of these imported agricultural goods. This situation will put the country into massive importation of our food stocks if government will not implement interventions and programs that will address these challenges.
According to the Department of Agriculture, the national government is committed to sustain higher farm spending focused at empowering the stakeholders in agriculture to cope up with these challenges. Government spending in agriculture increased from Php 25.36 billion in 2007 to Php 46.86 billion this year (2009). Spending on irrigation resulted to an increase in palay production, according to the DA report.
However, the DA also noted that LGUs are not efficient in utilizing the funds downloaded to them from the national government. The Department of Agriculture has obligated some PhP2 billion in funds for the construction of farm to market roads and downloaded the funds to the LGUs, but the money up to now remained unused by LGUs.
So, it the stakeholders in Agriculture cannot absorb the billions of pesos of funds from the national government to implement programs that will address the challenges of free-trade, climate change and low productivity, then the Philippine Agriculture will go through the cycle of upheaval. source: Department of Agriculture
(CAPolinga)
