‘Agrillennials’ to the rescue of a dying breed

MAJAYJAY, LAGUNA — Serving a plate of garden salad she herself concocted — chopped lettuce, sliced star fruit ( balimbing), diced Java apple ( makopa), turnips and tomatoes topped with alfalfa, red amaranth and yellow cosmos — Angelica F. Costales, 22, is not typical of the Philippines’ younger generation.

The leafy greens and edible flowers in that recipe are all organic and she grew them in her family farm that carpets a patch of Mount Banahaw’s rainforest in varied hues of green, red and yellow.

Armed with organic fertilizer, solid knowledge and grit, Ms. Costales — an agricultural biotechnology graduate from the University of the PhilippinesLos Baños — and her older brother Reden Mark are marshalling six other millennials and more to build an army of farmers: the “Agrillennials.”

“We are so excited to tell the future generation of farmers that farming is not just a career. It is also business,” Ms. Costales said in an interview.

“So we are going to put the technical and entrepreneurial skills together through the mentoring program.”

Under the government’s “Go Negosyo” program, the young team is embracing farming in a way not seen among the older Gen Xers — the generation who, having seen their farmer-parents barely eking out a living from agriculture, migrated instead to the cities to make money.

That urban migration is largely blamed for the shrinking size of farms and having fewer people to replace the aging farmer population whose average age, according to media reports, is 57 years.

Three in every five farms in the Philippines were below one hectare with an average area of

0.28 hectare and concentrated in the Visayas and Mindanao, according to a survey the Philippine Statistics Authority conducted in 2012 but released just in December 2015.

The January round of the quarterly Labor Force Survey found agriculture workers only second to service sector employees in terms of number, accounting for 25.5% of the 39.347 million then reported with jobs.

Two decades ago — in the January 1996 survey round — agriculture’s share to total employment was 43.3%.

That trend could be a red flag: The Filipino farmer is a dying breed.

“The longevity (average lifespan) of Filipinos, that’s about 70 years old. If based on cohort of farmers, definitely there will not be enough numbers to replace them because of the lack of people who go into farming,” Jose Rene C. Gayo, vice-president of the MFI Farm Business Institute (formerly Meralco Foundation, Inc.), said in a telephone interview.

“Not much attention has been really given to it. This is a long-term problem. We shouldn’t wait for 10 years [to address it].”

While it’s a problem of national scale that could hit every Filipino’s stomach, it has been dealt with only in a fragmented way with the sector yet to find its panacea.

The Duterte government’s 2017 national budget boosted the National Irrigation Administration’s coffers with P2 billion for farmers to water their fields at no cost.

Economist Felipe M. Medalla, a member of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ Monetary Board, thinks that’s “a bad idea.”

“Free irrigation means people will not use water carefully. The idea of making irrigation free is very populist. It’s actually a bad idea,” Mr. Medalla told BusinessWorld.

The former Socioeconomic Planning chief is arguing against subsidies and free irrigation, noting how expensive those are to taxpayers.

A 12-year old case involving the purchase of about half-a-billion pesos of “overpriced” fertilizers ended last year with the acquittal from plunder charges of the main actor in the alleged scam, former Agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-joc” I. Bolante.

The National Food Authority ( NFA) – whose mandate is to ensure the country’s food security – meanwhile continued to book a capital deficiency to the tune of P143 billion in 2015, the seventh straight year that its liabilities exceeded assets despite continued subsidy from the national government. State auditors during the last review noted losses from “excess of stocks” or rice inventory and “doubtful” accounts, including expenses for meals and allowances given to NFA Council members and alternates.

“The problem with the DA (Department of Agriculture) is that it’s not structured to become a productivity-enhancing department because it has become essentially a patronage department… giving away things instead of raising productivity,” Mr. Medalla said.

That advice — raising productivity by building infrastructure such as irrigation and electricity to cut input costs, farm-to-market roads to bring farmers closer to where they can sell their produce, and multi-cropping so that another crop could take up the slack on lean season — has been a nagging one.

It’s what Mr. Gayo, whose MFI Farm Business Institute has farm-schools as a key initiative in the provinces, also prescribes.

“If you take a look at overall production of the Philippines, the import data on food shows you that we’re importing food more than we did 10 years ago,” Mr. Gayo pointed out.

Productivity could be tied to the size of the farm.

Mr. Medalla said: “One way to make farming attractive is make the farm large enough to be worth his while because no matter how good you are, you won’t make much money if you’re managing a three-hectare farm.”

But to the Costaleses, a small farm tilled with organic agricultural methods to yield more, combined with marketing acuity should be profitable enough. The Costales farm, which grew to 8 hectares from just 1,000 square meters 11 years ago and now supplies fresh produce to Metro Manila’s biggest supermarkets, is a story about farmers who were able to get their children into farming.

“You have to study what were the problems of the farmer before,” owner Josephine F. Costales said, citing a general lack of access to direct buyers that benefited middlemen who often price farm goods at a bargain.

“What’s good with the group is that we’re collaborating with private supermarkets for the farmers we train especially from Sulu. We don’t end at just mentoring. It’s a sustainable cycle,” her daughter, Angelica, said.

With statistics showing that a 57-year-old Filipino farmer has, on the average, five years of elementary education and may have difficulty absorbing new farming technology, Mr. Gayo said: “Maybe instead of training these old farmers, you might as well train their children.”

The Philippines could look to other countries like France, which has its “Maison Familiale et Rurale” farming-school model, he said.

“There’s a need for young people to rediscover agriculture. If you have these farmers with five years of education, you can’t do much,” Mr. Gayo said.

“But they have children. They can help solve the food problem of the Philippines.”