Sen. Cynthia Villar has exhorted businessmen in the Visayas to join efforts in changing mindsets and equip entrepreneurial-minded people with concepts, tools and strategies to excel and pursue agribusiness opportunities.
Villar, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food, was keynote speaker in the 24th Visayas Area Business Conference in Dumaguete on the theme Agribusiness as key to inclusive growth and business competitiveness in the Visayas.
“We need to get the younger generation interested in agriculture. It is not all about just tilling the land. There are a lot of exciting opportunities in agriculture,” she said.
She said a sunshine industry in agribusiness that has a big potential is agri or farm tourism. Under a bill that she filed, Senate Bill 2766 or the Farm Tourism Act of 2015, duly accredited farm tourism professionals and operators are entitled to incentives and tax exemptions.
Villar said there is an increasing number of opportunities in the agriculture sector, which is not surprising as the Philippines is an agricultural country. She also blamed the businessmen’s problem of the lack of access to funds and the high cost of capital to the slow implementation of the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act or R.A. 8435.
The AFMA calls for the allocation of at least P20 billion a year for agriculture modernization-related programs and projects.
Senator Villar cited poverty statistics dating from as far back as 1985, which until now show that the concentration of the poor are in the agriculture sector, who are among the lowest paid. Farmers and fishermen receive an average of 150 pesos a day. Still, reports of coconut farmers in Davao earning less than 50 pesos a day are prevalent.
40 percent of farmers and fishermen, and 60 percent of coconut farmers, are living below the poverty line of 5000 pesos a month.
“We need to bring down the poverty in the agriculture sector,” she said.
To reverse the poverty figures, Villar suggested for farmers to venture into agribusiness. We should develop efforts at changing mindsets to promote agribusiness opportunities.
She batted for the imposition of tariffs on rice importations to keep the Philippine farmers competitive as the Philippines improves its rice production capabilities in the wake of the ASEAN liberalization by 2017.
For now, the Philippines has a high production cost for rice at P10.50 per kilo. In contrast, Vietnam produce at P5.50 per kilo while Thailand spends P8.50 to produce a kilo of rice.
Part of the key, she said is for the Land Bank to widen access to funding for farm facilities.
“Land bank gives to microfinance at 4 percent, which they pass on at 14 percent. But some microfinance outlets charge as high as 36 percent per year. So there’s a need to talk again with the Land Bank,” she said.
Villar’s latest interest is in promoting Farm Tourism, which she says will be the next major earner for agriculture.
There are 30 agri-tourism sites in the Philippines today but she says there could be more. “There are 27 sites in Negros Occidental alone, which will lead the farm tourism business in the Philippines.”
Farm tourism, she explained, should not be a problem for Filipinos because our advantage is that we are inherently hospitable.
If only our farmers will be open to new models of farming. “We need to remember that 2/3 of our country’s population is involved in agriculture. We need to develop agriculture to lessen the impact of urban migration,” Villar said.
New models of farming like the Gawad Saka program will fetch farmers up to P50,000 per hectare monthly, in contrast to the ordinary farmers’ income of P4,000 per hectare per month.
“Gawad Saka awardees study better farm models that our ordinary farmers don’t know of. They have at least two crops. They don’t rely on one crop. Intercropping makes the soil more nutritious,” she said.
They also do livestock at the same time they do farming. Coconut farmers live on P50 a day but can augment it by intercropping. The farmers can plant coffee, cacao with companies.
