Joel E. Malazarte Jr.

GE8(7207)

What Happened to Philippine Agriculture?

Watching the video, basically helps us to appreciate more our country which is The
Philippines, and helps us be aware of the status that our agriculture is barely facing. We have
our own country’s set of problems which are Political and Social problems. Agriculture is one of
the problems of the Filipinos, knowing that agriculture is really a big factor for civilization and
development since it is where the people get their supply of food, energy to feed others, and
simply providing the Nation. I think we can all agree that the farmers itself are the one who
sustains our energy and even life because basically without them we will not exist since we
have no food to eat. Around the 1960s our country, the Philippines if one of the top agricultural
countries in the whole world, which leads to many opportunities for development and
opportunity to study our own practices we even have the International Rice Research Institute.

But today, some articles are honestly saying that our agriculture is sadly dying, since the
numbers of farmers are slowly decreasing. According to Philippine Rice Research Institute, the
farmers are gaining a very small amount of annual income which is only 104,268, and
continuously decreasing, compare to the farmers in the United States that they can get this
income for just working 5 hours. We can see that this income is very small for bills, medications,
and other payments that are needed to be paid. Sadly, the priority of our government today is
urbanization building lots and lots of infrastructures and establishments the Build Build Build
program, which are slowly decreasing the lot areas of the farmers. Mainly our government is
the problem, since I think they do not have the balance, resulting a not good support or a bad
sustainability to the farmers, well in fact some government officials are belittling the farmers
they are just approaching them if there is an election.
 But we should believe that these problems have their solutions, I think the better
solution that the government should establish, is to have a balance civilization, we all know that
infrastructure is a huge step for development but we should not forget that our agriculture is
the most important since it will sustain life. Establishing a proper price or amount for the
farmer's compensation or labor, a price that will help their family and their life improve, and
proper support to the farmers, it can be done by eradicating the corruption that is happening in
the government. It is also important that the farmers have their rights so that the rich people
cannot bully or belittle their works, some people may think that this may affect our balance in a
bad way, but surely it will not. It would be better than the government will support the farmers,
by giving them machines that will help their work and a discovering new ways or techniques for
a better supply of foods. The most important is a proper roads for the transport of goods, the
government is mainly focusing on improving the roads in the city which I think is not that
important than a proper road and highways for better transportation of goods.