PIDS Policy Note Omits It, But Why Not Organic Agriculture In PH Agribusiness For Healthier Economy, Successful Farmers – And Self-Sustaining Villages?

 

Bruce Tolentino’s Facebook sharing today, 03 Feb 2022, is an eye-opener to me, an agriculturist, as the item is PIDS Policy Notes dated Dec 2021: “Philippine Agriculture: Current State, Challenges, And Ways Forward,” downloadable as pdf, free. As an agriculturist and warrior writer, I had to investigate.

The author is Roehlano M Briones and digital publisher is the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS). Mr Briones says:

Agriculture was the biggest employer of the economy in the mid-1990s but has since given way to services…. Its share in employment had been consistently declining until 2019, but with the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a reversal in trend as workers left urban centers and found work in agriculture… However, the sector as a whole produced only about 9 percent of the country’s gross.

Mr Briones does not attempt to explain the Low Contribution of Agriculture to the economy, and there is no reason for him not to. His “Ways Forward” is much incomplete!

Two reasons I can give for the low farm productivity are (a) non-application of available aggie technologies & systems, and (b) repeated devastations by Climate Change.

I say Filipino farmers are in love with their chemical agriculture (CA), and/or our aggie extensionists are not teaching them better farming economics! Our farmers apply liberally chemical fertilizers and pesticides and blame the chemical traders for their poor agribusiness sense.

I recall that the love for chemical agriculture of Filipino farmers was already existing 61 years ago when I was Freshman at the UP College of Agriculture (UPCA); UPCA has since grown up and modernized into UP Los Baños, but the farmers have not changed their old CA thinking – despite the fact that farm chemicals are expensive! What Filipino farmers do is continually blame government for their uneconomic farming.

And Mr Briones’ 3,470-word policy paper ignores the connection of Agriculture to Climate Change, mentioning it vaguely and only once:

“Climate change has been a major factor in these low and erratic trends…”

That’s on page 2, then Mr Briones forgets about it, not explaining and not once mentioning it again in the rest of his paper!

But I thank Mr Briones for his acknowledgement-cum-dismissal of the economic importance of climate change, because he proves me right that those who should know about climate change do not!

I look again and then I notice that he avoids, or fails to point out and discuss chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides as generators of greenhouse gases (GHGs), man’s strengthening of his own enemy, climate change!

Organic agriculture (OA), which Mr Briones does not mention, is in fact an excellent solution to what he says are the low and erratic trends in agriculture! No, OA does not produce GHGs!

While CA contributes much of the GHGs, the applications of organic fertilizers and organic pesticides do not in any way contribute any form of GHGs.

So, OA is most intelligent when it comes to farming and fighting climate change at the same time!@517