New PH DA – Turning Many A Crisis Into Many An Opportunity

The image above that I copied from Shutterstock has the title: "Turn crisis into opportunity. The umbrella is receiving rain" (shutterstock.com). A paradigm shift: Instead of rejecting rain, we catch and find good uses for it!

On Tuesday, 28 October 2019, Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie spoke at the "Rural Development and Food Security Forum 2019" held at the Asian Development Bank, ADB, Headquarters in Mandaluyong City. Thanking the ADB "on behalf of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte and the Filipino people," he said, "the focus of this workshop group is to address the challenges that spring from the fragmentation of farmlands."

Manong Willie is thinking of economy of scale in agriculture, where cost per unit of output (P/kilo of rice produced) decreases with increasing scale of production (wider area where rice is grown/farmer). "The country's farmlands have been divided into miniscule sizes, currently averaging less than 1.7 hectares," he says;

Thus, there is an urgency to elevate the efficiency of our farmers, especially on how they adopt modern farm technologies. And this requires farm consolidation.

Manong Willie explains about that last sentence: "This will promote consolidation of production, without necessarily consolidating ownership, to enable efficient use of farm technologies and machineries."

I, writer, note that farm consolidation in one manner or another is only one of the myriad of opportunities presenting itself during this PH crisis in agriculture. During the ADB Forum, Manong Willie did mention what he calls The Eight Paradigms for the new PH Agriculture to grow from crises to opportunities:

(1)      Modernization of agriculture

(2)      Industrialization of agriculture

(3)      Promotion of exports

(4)      Farm consolidation

(5)      Roadmap development

(6)      Infrastructure development

(7)      Higher budget and investments for agriculture, and

(8)      Legislative support.

The more I look at each of the 8 paradigms, or policies, the more I see them as sources of inexhaustible opportunities for development inclusive of the poor farmers & fishers and their families.

With those 8 literally, sky is the limit – your imagination is the sky! Shall I count those opportunities now?

Here now are opportunities to insist that farmers must modernize their farming!

Here now are opportunities to convince the public and private sectors that PH Agriculture must industrialize.

Here now are opportunities for the development of products and promotion for their exports.

Here now are opportunities to insist on farm consolidation, although not necessarily ownership of lands.

Here now is the opportunity to draw a National Roadmap for agriculture and Regional Roadmaps as well based on the National.

Here now are opportunities for infrastructure development everywhere.

Here now are opportunities to request for higher budget and investments for agriculture. (At this juncture, we Filipinos hereby challenge the ADB with its headquarters in Metro Manila to venture into such higher and higher investments itself in the Philippines!)

Here now are opportunities to request legislative support for supportive policies as well as funds.

Look at the above Shutterstock image again – We are now looking at the PH Agriculture umbrella upturned to capture the pouring of the rainwater of opportunities!@517