Agriculture PH Needs To Increase Investment In Public Goods
“Increase investment in public goods” – With me as Filipino agriculturist who happens to be a communicator for development, those 5 words of advice opened my eyes wide to the package of reforms that my country needs to bring PH Agriculture to prosperity.
The advice comes from Vice Chair V Bruce J Tolentino of the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC), who is also a Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Monetary Board Member, speaking during the first day of PH’s “National Food Security Summit” (Author Not Named, 24 May 2021). Mr Tolentino was “giving emphasis on the need to boost investments” in the agriculture & fisheries sector, as well as the need to implement the proposed amendments to the Agri Agra Law (RA 10000).
We Filipinos do not associate more government funds and wider management with much-more improved PH Agriculture – well, it’s time we did!
In those 21 words above, based on the Facebook sharing by ANN (top image), that’s my summary of the presentation of Mr Tolentino.
Pointing out that “poverty among farmers and fishers remain the highest among basic sectors,” Mr Tolentino said, “What we need are major solutions for these issues.” He laid out actually 3 major policy recommendations, but I’m interested only in the first, because that’s where my fields and interests lie:
“Increase investment in public goods that increase agri-fishery productivity, including science & technology, effective extension, efficient irrigation, and marketing infrastructure.”
Extension is my field. Let me grant that there is “Effective extension” in agriculture, but it is quite inadequate in form, content & intent. Like, we are still relying on radio! We refuse to learn the new digital language so powerful it can express anything and everything without the audience moving from location to location and day to day!
Yes, the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) has digital courses, but they number only 18! (See my earlier essay, “On Extension, PH’s Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) Is Good – Could Be Much Better[1].”) Only 18 courses to serve 10 million farmers from Aparri to Jolo! If budget is the excuse, now Mr Tolentino has spoken up for the ATI, no more excuses.
More than ATI’s e-courses, no matter the number, I see the urgent need to build a digital Knowledge Bank on PH Agriculture – designed for tapping by communicators for development like me, the ATI, as well as advanced farmers.
With the Knowledge Bank, I’m thinking of the whole Department of Agriculture (DA) working with cooperatives around the country. The lower image above is my photo of a meeting of the board members of our Asingan, Pangasinan’s Nagkaisa Multi-Purpose Cooperative (at a hotel in Subic 08 October 2016), because I believe that cooperatives are the best conduits for extension efforts for PH Agriculture, from planting to cultivation to care to harvesting to processing to storage to marketing. In all those steps, the indispensable role of credit must be allowed to be played out. Our farmers are notorious for borrowing from usurers who, unfailingly, threaten to draw Shylock blood from their failing borrowers all the time!@517
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