The pitiful state of our country’s agriculture

Sorry if this column was missing from your radar for two Saturdays, including the recent Black Saturday when The STAR had no issue in keeping with its long-time honored tradition.

Before the two-week break, our topic centered on Philippine agriculture.  I didn’t realize that this touched a nerve in more people than I would have imagined.  I got a lot of feedback and e-mails from our readers.  Unfortunately, due to space constraint, I can’t reprint all of them here. However,  one e-mail  stood out because it rectified an error I had printed in my column, and it gave inputs from  someone who I guess is from this sector and understands the current state of agriculture in the country. Thank you Mr. Dante Dizon for your comments.

Hereunder, verbatim,  is the e-mail from our dear reader in reaction to my column:

“Hi Ray,

Cost of hybrid seeds per hectare is P4,000-P5,000 not P20,000 for two hectares.

Primary problem in borrowing money from Landbank is not interest rate, but documentation for the collateral.  If one of the siblings have to borrow money and land title still with the brother and sisters, all of them have to be co-signatory, chances one or two will desist.  Farmer have no choice but to borrow money from traders — usurers at rate 3 percent per month for the five month period.

So long as our production cost of palay (unhusked rice) is higher than Vietnam and Thailand, smuggling here to stay because it is too lucrative.  Implementation of Asian Economic Cooperation is not far behind.  Big time rice traders will flood the market with cheap rice.  What will happen to poor rice farmers?

Production subsidies for our rice farmers is not a solution, since our government cannot afford it and it breeds inefficiencies.

There are proven home grown rice production techniques that can be lower than production cost than Thailand and Vietnam.  But it needs some effort to transfer technology to farmer level.  It is not rocket technology, but farmer attitude is ‘to see is to believe,’ and resist change.

One needs a strong organization and capital to transfer technology.  Unfortunately none of the big industries are interested to invest on agricultural projects.

Economics 101, agriculture must be developed before industrialization.  About 40 percent of our workers are agri-base, yet it contribute only less than 10 percent of our GNP.  Why our less qualified female go abroad as domestic maids and male workers accept low paying, dirty and dangerous jobs.  Oil base economy countries have their own problems, with employ bulk of our OFW.

Our rural poor are about 40 percent of the population.”

We are largely an agricultural country, but farming here has lost out to everything else because it simply isn’t viable, let alone profitable. All the children who were fortunately sent to college by their hardworking parents from the proceeds of their rice fields inherited from their forebears have abandoned the land in favor of call centers and real estate companies.  As lady farmer-leader Ms. Trining Domingo pointed out, even prime farm lands have been surrendered to private land developers, no thanks to the local government units that abetted such transfers.

There is so much more to agriculture than rice farming though.  The Philippines, for instance, is rich in all-natural sea salt and the tree of life, coconut.  In both these two sectors, there is much to be earned by our young farmer-entrepreneurs, if they care to.  Sea salt is a premium product in many countries now, but here it costs only about P190/sack.  In a recent Business & Leisure interview with the president of Marigold Manufacturing Corp., makers of the popular Mama Sita’s mixes and sauces, I was aghast at Mrs. Clara Reyes Lapus’s revelation that, pursuant to a DOH ruling that pushes iodized salt as the preferred table salt, the sale of natural sea salt is not only discouraged by government, our salt farmers in fact are harassed by law enforcers as they bring their truck loads of newly-harvested salt to other provinces.  Why is this so when other countries like Japan does not accept imported iodized salt into their country, preferring the all-natural sea salt? The salt farmers of Pangasinan,  Mindoro and other coastal areas have not given up on this age-old industry, but they must raise the bar so that our sea salt production can be at par with other nations.  The Mediterranean sea salt, the pink Himalayan sea salt — these varieties are pricey, yet they are one and the same salt from the ocean. The difference is they are very clean and without impurities and are packaged beautifully.  Why not Philippine sea salt indeed?  Iodized salt has a terrible after taste, and while they may be vital to certain sectors who are otherwise iodine-deprived, they should not be forced down the throats of people who have no need, or taste, for them.

Coconut water is another — Americans have such a voracious taste for them that this is now a multi-million dollar business in the US, and Europe is not too far behind.  For a while there,  I thought this would be the next pan de sal and every other businessman would be exporting bottled coconut water to all parts of the globe.  There are already quite a few, but the global market is so big now that there is still a lot of room left for this product.  The problem is and always will be competitiveness.  Somehow, we always lose out here, and it is not a question of supply.  Yes, we now have a problem of aging coconut trees, but supply is still abundant.  Let’s focus on consistent quality, shelf life and packaging, and marketing will be a breeze.

Lately, there is news that scientists from UP Mindanao are being tapped to develop coconut water into powder.  This is another potentially big development, but let’s not procrastinate or the scientists of Thailand, China and Vietnam will steal the thunder from us again.  We are not lagging in R&D, but implementation is always where the snags are.  Why?

Mabuhay!!! Be proud to be a Filipino.

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