AGRI 61

Second Semester, 2019-2020

Commentary Paper No. 2

Laurenz James C. De Matta

June 8, 2020

The ‘new thinking' for agriculture by Department of Agriculture Secretary Dr. William
Dar discusses the eight paradigms of his strategy to tackle the agricultural problems
that leads to low productivity and low income. In the first part, Dr. Dar presses for the
goal of the sector to double the income of smallholder farmers and fisherfolks. The
eight paradigms are: (1) Modernization must continue, (2) Industrialization of
agriculture is key, (3) Promotion of exports is a necessity, (4) Consolidation of small-
and medium-sized farms, (5) Infrastructure development would be critical, (6) Higher
budget and investment for Philippine agriculture, (7) Legislative support is needed
,and (8) Roadmap development is paramount. Dr. Dar pushes the need to increase
agricultural research spending for value-adding. He also discussed how the India is
pursuing to double the income of India’s smallholder farmers by 2022 or 2023,
through the National Institution for Transforming India. This means that his goal are
not lone in the world. He claimed that with the joint forces of the local government
unit, academe, civil society, nongovernment organizations and the citizenry, this goal
will be closer to reality.

This strategy is connected to Agricultural extension and communication because,

extension workers are the core workers that will evaluate current extension programs
to see if there's a gap in the pipeline of delivering research and innovation to the
common farmers. This strategy also aims to consolidate small and medium sized
farms. Consolidating farmers would be a tough challenge however, sending an
extension worker would be a game changer. Extension workers can effectively
communicate with the farmers to present the advantages and disadvantages of
creating alliances. It will also ensure them linkage to the value chain.

Agricultural services in local government units should be developed by allocating

additional manpower, intensifying the training to ensure the proficiency of the officers
and providing stricter requirements in choosing higher officials in Regional offices.
The officers should be graduates of Agriculture related courses in order to ensure
that they have sufficient knowledge on their undertaking.

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The modernization of agriculture in the Philippines will surely boost its output, but are
we going to be able to carry the burden of themodernization. We should also
consider the ability of farmers, especially the small hold farmers, to adopt modern
technologies and practices without sacrificing their livelihood security. The
government should aid poor farmers gain access to capital through savings, credit,
or agricultural production. There should be a fair credit and finance mechanism to
reduce the farmers that goes bankrupt. Farmer’s organizations should always be
consulted so that we know directly their needs and wants, hence the consolidation. It
is important to adopt existing knowledge systems and production practices to ensure
the participation of communities that practices them. We must find the middle road in
between modern agriculture and the indigenous agriculture so that we can promote
better yield while considering the preferred production practices,

It is a good idea, however we should not be hoping for immediate change.

Understanding the mechanisms of modern technologies will slow the overall
process. The learning curve of these technologies are steep. Proper seminars and
organized lessons given by extension workers should be planned so that the farmers
will be able to utilize the given technology. Sufficient budget should be allotted to the
agricultural sector of local governments units. These practices involves the use of
computers and smart phones to efficiently utilize other technologies such as drones
in identifying pests, applying fertilizers, identifying field problems, and etc,

Industrialization requires active leadership in monitoring the progress in a higher

scale. Moreover, market oriented researches should be the goal in order to let the
farmers directly experience the fruits of research for development.

The main problem in this paradigm is the lack of connection to between agribusiness
firms, enterprises, and the government. I believe that the agencies concerned on this
tasks should step up their game in finding more and more firms that will buy local
products. With the rice tarrification law and the problem with sugar importation. Local
agencies should even out the marketability potential between local producers and
other country’s producers. We should also aim for a broader export market. There is
a lot of great crops produced in the Philippines such as pineapple, oil crops etc. The
sector should inform and assist in guiding local farmers in shifting to high value
crops. We should also promote diversification and multiple cropping to help our
farmers achieve their maximum income. In promoting financial literacy, we are
actually transforming our farmers to agripreneurs.

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The idea is really great, however it is to vague. How are they going to be
consolidated? By area of operations? By their produce? Or by their market? There
will be some problems about the synchronization since the Philippine lands has
various terrains. Even on a single town, there are areas where you can plant upland
and lowland crops. I praise the idea of a collective organization about farmers since
these types of organizations tend to be the body that leads to the intersection of their
knowledge. It is their outlet in sharing practices, experiences and complaints.
Through these types of organizations, the data that will be processed by
agriculturists are far more organized. But then, they should develop a strong
framework for this idea to work properly.

From my perspective, the infrastructures under the build build build program are
focused on urban development. A part of the program should be allocated on
countryside infrastructure development. Roads that connect small and medium
farmers to market area is a great strategy to lessen transport loss due to bad roads.
Good irrigation systems should be developed to promote production of agricultural
crops in the Philippines. Irrigation systems in the Philippines has been a problem
over and over again due to inappropriate designs and corruption.