Research group IBON said that the crisis in Philippine
agriculture due to government negligence contradicts claimed economic
achievements under the Duterte Legacy Campaign. The group said that the
administration’s neglect and prioritization of local and foreign big business
interests is worsening an already weak and struggling sector.
IBON said signs of this agriculture crisis include slowing
sectoral growth; shrinking share in gross domestic product; rising import
dependence; increasing trade deficit; significant job losses; and widespread
rural poverty.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported a minimal
0.4% growth in agriculture in the fourth quarter of 2019. Under the
administration, year-on-year growth trend in agriculture has been declining.
From a contraction of 1.2% in 2016, agriculture bounced back with a 4% growth in
2017. But this was short-lived when growth fell to 0.9% in 2018 with a slight
increase to 1.5% in 2019, noted the group.
IBON said that agriculture’s share in gross domestic product
(GDP) has been declining from 8.8% in 2016 to 8.5% in 2017, 8.1% in 2018, and 7.8%
in 2019. This is a far cry from its over 40% share in the economy in the 1960s.
While the country has been increasingly dependent on food
and agricultural imports in the past couple of decades, this has further
heightened under the Duterte administration, the group said. For instance, the
country’s consumption of garlic imports was only 1.1% in 1990, but this surged
to 91% in 2018. Rice import dependency
ratio (IDR) meanwhile decreased from 9% in 1990 to 5% in 2016. But this grew to
13.8% in 2018 and could worsen with the increase in rice imports due to the
Rice Liberalization Law.
IBON noted that as much as 1.4 million jobs were lost in
agriculture, with employment falling from 11.1 million in 2016 to 9.7 million
in 2019. This translates to an average annual job loss of 455,000 in this
period.
Another indicator of agriculture in crisis is widespread rural
poverty, said IBON. Poverty incidence among farmers (34.3%) and fisherfolk
(34%) is higher than the national average (21.6%), according to latest
available figures. However, IBON estimates that at least 90% of farmers and
fisherfolk are impoverished, if based on more reasonable standards of poverty
measurement.
IBON said that despite its worsening state, the agriculture
sector remains low priority for the administration. The 3.5% share of
agriculture in the 2020 budget is the lowest since 2004 at 3.3 percent. The
group also noted that annual average share of agriculture in the national
budget from 2017 to 2020 was just 3.6% – the lowest since the Ramos
administration (3.5%).
IBON said that agriculture, hand in hand with domestic
manufacturing, is an important productive sector that, if supported and
strengthened towards public interest, could help boost and sustain genuine
development and job creation. The administration’s continued neglect of the
sector and advancement of harmful pro-big business policies that are destroying
local production and farmers’ livelihoods only shows how fake the Duterte
Legacy really is, the group said. ###
Photo from Kodao Productions