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Roadmap guides agriculture to 2020

By MELODY M. AGUIBA

A key farm roadmap called "Philippine Agriculture 2020" (PA2020) is seen to bring about a stunning rise in farm growth by 2020, lifting agriculture’s gross value added to P422 billion by 2020 from a 2000-2004 base of P206.2 billion or a yearly seven percent growth.

A PA2020 report indicated that the growth will be stirred by high-growth farm sectors like fishery, seaweeds, and marine culture; export products such as poultry, sugar, abaca, and coconuts; and the cornlivestock tie-up.

Initiated by the National Academy of Science and Technology’s (NAST) agricultural sciences division, PA2020 is being drawn in coordination with the Department of Agriculture and its attached agencies, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Science and Technology, and Department of Land Reform.

While recognizing that farm ownership in the country is normally smallhold, it noted that tropical fruit export products banana, pineapple, and papaya are "international benchmarks in global trade."

PA2020 projects agriculture’s reduced percentage share of gross domestic product from 20 percent in the 2000-2004 base to just 15 percent and decreasing agriculture share in employment from 33.4 (11.4 million) percent to 31 percent (22.6 million) by 2020.

But this signals alleviated poverty specially in the rural areas as surplus labor will be absorbed by agro-industries. While agriculture-dependent families in the country accounts for 40 percent of the population, PA2020 lamented that these families represent 67 percent of the country’s poor.

In export terms, farm exports will double from a share of 5.3 percent or $1.9 billion of total exports in the base period to 9.4 percent or $9.4 billion by 2020.

PA2020 is based on three pillars—"organizing and managing agriculture as a business (market-driven, liberalized trade), alleviating poverty through asset reform (transfer of rights to assets to the poor to encourage investments); and nurturing the values of nature and community.

These three pillars are buttressed by three strategies—technology development (which should cut production cost while green technologies will sustain ecosystems), investments (infrastructure, post harvest, labor, research and development), and governance reforms.

Farm growth is planned to be the result of a public and private sector convergence as private firms will be encouraged to locate in coastal, upland, and forest communities to run postharvest, processing, and distribution operations.

This use of the ecosystem was inspired by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) showing crucial relations between ecosystems and their benefit to human well-being.

In this private sector participation, movers will be non-government organizations, people’s organizations, and communitybased natural resource management (CBNRM) groups which now tend 5.71 million hectares.

A total of 50,000 hectares of new irrigated land will be developed in the lowland yearly which will bring a physical irrigated area of 2.2 million hectares in 2020.

This will require a budget of R3.26 billion for construction, operation and maintenance of communal irrigation systems and shallow tube wells and R2.75 billion for rehabilitation of existing 1.22 million hectare-irrigation capacity which presently runs at just 72 percent capacity.

An estimated R66.6 billion for public investments should improve the country’s extensive but unpaved roads which play crucial role in product transport from production sites to market distribution centers.

The roadmap was also drafted in anticipation of a R40 billion public investment in inter-island transport and port facilities under the Medium Term Philippine Development Plan for 2004-2010.

The roadmap noted that the Philippines’ technical input-output parameters in the production of poultry, hog, and farm crops are competitive with its Asian neighbors.

But the inherent weakness of the country’s under-investment in basic infrastructure posed serious constraints on farm growth, allowing traders to dictate farm gate prices and making transport costs prohibitive which slowed down growth.

PA2020 estimated that at least 10 percent of the country’s 26 millionhectare coastal waters can be transformed into mariculture areas while only 59,000 out of 255,000 hectares of suitable shallow coastal waters are farmed for seaweeds, finfish, abalone, and see cucumbers.

This should be boosted particularly to provide livelihood to Muslim coastal communities.

Technology will play a vital part here including breeding of crops that have tolerance to biological and environmental stress, biofortification (crop improvement for nutritive value), integrated pest management (to cut harmful pesticide use), intercropping (coconut with cocoa to maximize land use), animal health (to eradicate diseases such as foot and mouth disease), and integrated soil fertility management (to improve fertilizer efficiency).

Biotechnology will also play a pivotal role here including the use of conventional biotechnologies (biofertilizer, biopesticides, tissue culture; genetic modification (coconut, banana, mango, papaya, abaca); and livestock (in vitro oocyte fertilization which produces superior animals for dairy and breeding).

For forestry, technology will involve development of high-quality wood and non-timber plantations, minimization of waste in raw material use, conversion of waste into useful products like fiberboards and activated carbon, and development of global information system that provides data on forestry climate, soil, and physiography.

Other research areas should be in developing value-added products, food processing technologies, development of cold chain systems, packaging, agricultural mechanization without affecting labor use, land preparation machines for tillage and crop establishment, post harvest, biofuels, water conservation systems, and alternative energy source.

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