The agricultural spectrum in the Philippines is important in the growth and development of its economy and boosting the cultivation of land for farming purposes and also other products. This also entails the other agricultural factors like animal livestock and livelihood industries that are taken from agricultural development itself. During the late 1980s, almost 8 million hectares of land were under cultivation, which is 4.5 million were appropriated in filed crops and 3.2 million hectares in tree crops. And when the population grew, it reduced the amount of arable land per person employed in agriculture from about 1 hectare. In present times, the agricultural sector of the Philippines is faring quite well, there was a recent review that took into consideration the various agricultural efforts and products like fishing, forestry, and mining that continue to expand and produce products and food products for people’s everyday living.
Also, with the increasing incomes of the domestic market in the Philippines, more and more have to power to get those quality products and food products produced by the agricultural sector; people are now being more sophisticated and quality conscious. The foreseeable challenge is the number of supply to meet the demands of buyers. The thing that comes into mind is the regional agricultural development of rural areas providing those various products and food products, do they have the power to produce on time and have competitive trade with foreign markets as well? The answer is yes because the Philippines has increased advantages in terms of technical, literacy, and entrepreneurial skills to push forth economic growth via agriculture. However, there are still pending challenges that need to be addressed like the slow growth of the GDP share of forestry and fisheries, still there proves to be silver linings for employment opportunities for the sector from 33 to 48 percent respectively. This means that there will be increase in productivity and other growth areas.
Agricultural Progress in the Philippines
There is an evident growth in the economy thank to agriculture which has increased to 6 percent over the years. This is attributed to positive external forces in the world economy and to recent structural reforms; it integrated significant sectors of the economy itself to various investment opportunities and global trade. There is also an increase on competition in the private sector from export base commodity reliance to value added goods.
Key Issues Identified in the Agricultural Sector of the Philippines
Supporting investments in agriculture – to provide for a more positive and conducive agriculture, several priorities are highlighted: implementing good governance reforms to minimize agricultural policy, completing the agrarian land reform, increasing the stock of rural agriculture, and enhance productivity and production. All of these stated above can be achieved by improving the infrastructure of rural areas and land labor productivity of agribusinesses. This can also pave the way to remove inequities in asset valuation, efficient land markets, and property rights.
Supporting the management of the environment and its natural resources – having a sound implementation of measures and efforts to safeguard the natural resources and environment of the Philippines is a big plus, this way, it lessens excessive environmental costs and already eroding natural resource inventories. There should be no compromise in short term economic growth by applied long terms costs. This is possible through establishing a sound and efficient basis of institution fro environment and natural resources management; strive on improvements on prioritized functions, rational expenditures, and improved delivery of services.
Support towards the growth of public sector management – There must be public resources available that can help in growing the financial expenditure for agriculture. There should be a strive towards having expenditures that have a focused scope and function. Government spending for infrastructure and agribusiness should be focused on strengthening on the planning and budgeting in rural development areas.
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