Ageing Filipino farmers pose threat to food security

Go back to the province and plant kamote (sweet potato),” was what teachers usually told students who fared poorly in school or were better off going back to the provinces to literally plant kamote.

While that statement has a condescending tone up to now, it may soon become a call for more of the youth to take up farming because the country’s farmers are aging. And planting kamote, among others, is now being encouraged by the government to relieve pressure on domestic rice supplies.

Based on a study conducted by the Central Mindanao University (CMU), the average age of the Filipino farmer today is 55 years old. Dante Delima, an assistant secretary at the Department of Agriculture who is in charge of the agency’s Rice Programme, pegged the average age of the Filipino farmer at 59.

The high average age of the country’s farming population shows that much of the youth have shunned tilling the soil as a profession or business undertaking.

Dr Eduardo Bagtang, the president of the Kalinga-Apayao State College (KASC) told Manila Times that much of the youth today shun farming because of its perceived hardships, and many farming families are part of the country’s poor sector.

“The reason is their parents are farmers. So why do they have to go back to farming? They witnessed that in farming the cost of inputs is high, and they sell their produce at low prices,” he said.

Based on the latest poverty incidence report from the National Statistical Coordination Board, poverty incidence is highest among fishermen and farmers at 41.4% and 36.7% in 2009. In 2009, the poverty incidence was pegged at 26.5%.

The waning interest of the youth in taking up farming as a vocation has resulted in a drop in the registrations in agricultural courses, which are offered primarily in state universities and colleges. “That discourages their (farmers’) sons and daughters to take agriculture (courses),” Bagtang said.

“In general and across the Philippines, yes. This is apparent in the decreasing enrolment in most colleges and universities that offer degree programmes in agriculture. One probable reason is the availability of two-year courses that allow students to get employed with less expense on college education and with work that are semi white-collared jobs,” Dr Maria Luisa Soliven, president of CMU told Manila Times.

Bagtang said in their case, the KASC offering free tuition for agriculture courses has not helped in increasing student registrations for that degree.

Four to five years ago, KASC’s enrolment for agriculture courses was around 400 to 500 students. In the last school year, it was about 300. KASC has a student population of about 5,000.

“They (students) want jobs that are urban in nature, into IT (information technology), arts and science, those that can land them in any office work,” Bagtang said.

He added that when school officials interviewed students on their disinterest in taking agriculture courses, one of the answers given is the lack of employment opportunities in the farming sector.

Bagtang’s view is somehow supported by the latest Labour Force Survey conducted by the National Statistics Office, which indicated that agriculture receives the lowest average daily basic wage and salary compared to non-agriculture sectors.

While the government knows about the problems that can be caused by the aging of the country’s population of farmers, its impact has not yet been quantified in numbers.

But Soliven offers a view: “If there will be fewer young people who will be interested to pursue careers in agriculture and related disciplines, then this could definitely aggravate food insecurity in the Philippines.”

Rex Bingabing, the executive director of the Philippine Centre for Postharvest Development and Mechanisation (PhilMech), said quitting by aging Filipino farmers has led to problems in some areas in the country, which could lead to a food crisis.

“In many areas, we are already experiencing the effects of this scenario. In places in Central Luzon, farm owners are already having difficulty in finding farm workers during the time of planting and harvest,” he said. “This can be a potential problem since farm owners might decide to convert their lands into industrial or commercial areas if they would not profit anymore from agriculture and eventually compromise the sustainability of our food sufficiency,” Bingabing added.

While the government has yet to determine how many farmers are quitting because of old age, the preliminary results of the last Labour Force Survey (LFS) of the National Statistics Office (NSO) showed 624,000 workers losing their jobs during the period in review.

“The drop in the (country’s overall) employment rate is due to the decline in employment in the agriculture sector, with the number of agricultural workers falling from an estimated 12.468mn in April 2012 to 11.844mn in April 2013, or by about 624,000 workers,” it said.

The survey revealed that the number of employed Filipinos went down to an estimated 37.819mn in April this year, lower than last year’s 37.840mn, a decrease of about 21,000 workers, showing that the agriculture sector lost the most number of workers. This is ironic considering that the Aquino administration has been pouring in billions of pesos for irrigation and farm mechanisation projects over the past three years.

If there is any consolation, it is that aging farmers are not unique to the Philippines.

Dr Gil C Saguiguit Jr., director of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) based in Los Banos, Laguna, said that attracting new blood into the agriculture sector of a number of Asian countries has become a human resource (HR) problem.

“The Philippines, with a modernising farming sector, is already experiencing the problem of the youth preferring to look for jobs in the urban areas or abroad, leaving the country’s farms seeking young blood. That is only one of several human resource development problems being experienced by the Philippine farming sector,” he said.

The challenges to agricultural human resources development were examined during the international symposium on Human Resource Development in Agricultural Science: Towards fostering Japanese researchers to play an active role in international agricultural research organised by the International Cooperation Centre for Agricultural Education based in Nagoya University, Japan.

Representatives from various agencies like SEARCA attended the symposium, which was held late last year.

During the forum, it was revealed that developing countries in Asia like Myanmar and developed ones like Japan are experiencing similar problems of aging farmers.

An article in the website of The Economist placed the average of Japanese farmers in 2010 at 70 years old. –Conrad M Carino/Manila Times