“Sustainable Agriculture does not deplete soils or people.” – Wendell Berry
Sadly, the evolution of Philippine agriculture also develops and nurtures a different kind of quagmire among Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries (ARBs) and marginal farmers in the countryside causing migration. They claim poverty still persists with its scale getting wider and deeper and that the only way to hurdle this to look for better economic opportunities outside.
EXPLOITATION OF A NEW KIND?
Poverty persists caused by land ownership re-concentration despite the agrarian reform program. This time it is the few individuals of their kind that gradually amass profit making their fellow agrarian beneficiaries mere laborers whose land they have bought or rent for a considerable period of time. This new scheme is a common practice among ARB communities on recognized large scale crops integral to economy and as a major source of livelihood. These are rice, sugarcane and coconut.
Subsequently, agrarian reform as a social justice program has now become the “cause of the problem.” This is one of the major reasons for migration, especially the new generation because they found agriculture as highly labor-intensive work with less economic rewards. The average Filipino farmer age is now, at 57-59 years old which simply means that youth are not inclined to do farming.
While some are aware of the importance and value of farming they prefer to leave to take on other pursuits lured by technology advancement and urban infrastructures. Both are not effected or maximized for agriculture or farming use.
A GLOBAL PHENOMENON
Unabated and inevitable, migration is an integral element in an interconnected world. But it is also an issue globally highlighting its importance and its economic impact when citizens move along and across borders.
World Bank reported in 2016 that highly-industrialized countries accommodates 34 percent of all global migrants with United States leading the way and 38 percent of them are in developing countries. It is noticeable that most of this migrants are coming from countries not as advanced as they are.
In the Philippines, internal migration is made up of significant numbers attributed mainly from the countryside to the urban – from farming to construction, BPOs, household while others pursue education all, at the expense of agriculture. The UN’s FAO declared that, “In the last decade there is already a crisis in agriculture caused by productivity decrease, high production costs and low government support.” The lack of productivity is the lack labor because of urban influx from the countryside.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) added that, “The general trends in the last two decades present a dim picture of the agriculture sector because there is neglect of the agriculture sector and the uneven distribution of resources worsened the poverty situation.” The reason it ratified Convention 141 decades back recognizing the importance of rural workers but to this day, the challenges persist – bigger and more challenging.
WORRISOME FIGURES
Moreover, Philippine Statistics Authority shows that there are 3 million Filipinos who changed residence in the past decade with 50 percent long-distance migrants and almost 46 percent are short-distanced. In 2017, there were just under 6 million Filipinos living abroad with an increasing trend, to date. For domestic migration Western Visayas comes in second next to Bicol due to its proximity to NCR as the center of Philippine economy. There are at least 700,000 migrated from Bicol to Metro Manila and more than 500,000 from Western Visayas.
Rapid urbanization continuing to this day with an annual population increase of 3.3 percent making Philippines one of the fastest urbanizing countries in the Asia-Pacific. The World Bank also emphasized that, in the last 50 years the urban population has increased by over 50 million. In 2050 102 million people will reside in cities.
Conservatively, in 5 million farmers there is at least one migration from each family who moved to the cities or abroad.
RECOVER AGRICULTURE
Migration by any feature cannot be stopped. What is more than an imperative is to recover agriculture as major economic contributor. To underline – serious strategic agricultural planning for modernization as declared by the President in his Philippine Development Plan must be pursued.
A few major immediate actions must be underway – young generation must be re-inculcated of the value of agriculture for food security and address poverty, infrastructure development in the countryside based on the production system and serious re-investment.
We need an inclusive blueprint to remedy migration and eliminate the new kind of exploitation in the rural areas.*
