MAPping the Future: The case of 2.4 million hectares of missing farmlands

In 2015, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) released the highlights of the muchawaited 2012 Census of Agriculture. The last census before that was made in 2002. The statistics are of importance to policy makers and investors.

Sadly, not too many people in government are appreciative of accurate and timely statistics and the analytics for decision- making. In the process, many pronouncements by heads of the executive and legislative branches are also inaccurate.

For example, some politicians claim that the Philippines is the world’s top coconut producer. We lost that rank more than 20 years ago to Indonesia. Another example is that the country exported $440 million worth of bananas in 2015. In re- ality, it exported more than twice that amount based on imports of buyer countries.

My thesis is that the Philippines is under-investing in statistics collection, in people and resources.

Now the census. In 2012, it was determined that there were 7.2 million hectares (ha) of farmlands in the country. Ten years earlier, there were 9.6 million ha, and in 1991, there were almost 10 million ha.

Where did the 2.4 million ha go? Definitely it was not land conversion. Since 1986, there were about 220,000 ha of farmlands converted. At the same time, the DENR has classified 14.2 million ha as certified alienable and disposable lands, almost twice the size of the latest agriculture census.

The overall area decline of farmland between 2002 and 2012 was 25 percent. The huge discrepancies are carried across the regions: the lowest in Cagayan Valley and Caraga at -12 percent each, and the highest in Central Visayas -44 percent, Eastern Visayas -37 percent, ARMM -35 percent, Western Mindanao -33 percent, and Western Visayas -31 percent. Regions such as Central Luzon and Calabarzon, which are likely to post potential large declines due to land conversion, slid by -22 percent and -15 percent, respectively, below the national average. NCR areas grew dramatically!

No reasons were cited for the area decline in the 2012 census.

Not too many people in government are appreciative of accurate statistics