This May 15, 2020 photo shows a general view of the skyline in Manila, the Philippines. (TED ALJIBE / AFP)

Countries such as the Philippines can study Chinese experiences in agricultural development to make up vulnerabilities exposed in the pandemic, according to analysts.

The Philippines is one of the rapidly growing economies in Southeast Asia, posting an annual average growth of more than 6% from 2016 to 2019

This is the right time to rebuild the agriculture sector, given the renewed focus on national food security, industry players said. 

And the Philippines can learn valuable lessons from other countries such as China that succeeded in boosting farm production and feeding its growing population despite possessing only 7 percent of the world’s arable land.

The Philippines is one of the rapidly growing economies in Southeast Asia, posting an annual average growth of more than 6 percent from 2016 to 2019. The agriculture sector, however, lags behind with an annual average growth rate of 1.3 percent.

“Notwithstanding the importance of the sector, agricultural policy has been manifestly unsuccessful in sparking dynamic development,” the World Bank said in its Sept 7 report on agriculture in the Philippines.

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The Washington-based lender said the pandemic has given an opportunity to the Philippines to create a “more resilient, inclusive, competitive, and environmentally-sustainable” farm system. 

One of the World Bank’s proposed interventions is land consolidation, and it has advised the Philippines to learn from China’s successful agricultural model.

The bank said China’s land-consolidation program has expanded household farms and created more land cooperatives and company-run farms. In turn, this has led to increased investment in agricultural production and facilitated temporary or permanent migration to urban areas.

“While the government cannot create new arable land, it can pursue policies to support, consolidate, and intensify farming operations on the land that is still available,” the World Bank said.

Fermin Adriano, special adviser to the Philippines’ Secretary of Agriculture, said fragmented land holdings is one of the major factors that hamper farm productivity. He cited China’s strong institutional support which has made land consolidation possible and hoped this can be replicated in the Philippines.

“Land consolidation will create economies of scale,” Adriano told China Daily. By consolidating numerous small land holdings into one big farming operation, farmers can pool their resources and jointly market their produce, which will allow them to bypass middlemen and earn more. 

Adriano also noted the lack of funding for agricultural research in the Philippines. He said this is in contrast to China’s huge investments in agricultural R&D, allowing the country to develop high-yielding crops such as rice.

The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences said China is among the world’s leaders in agricultural research and one of the biggest contributors of agricultural patents, according to a report filed by Xinhua News Agency.

Investments in agricultural research have paid off for China. It has developed hybrid rice varieties since the 1970s. At present, China's average yield of rice is about 500 kilograms per mu (equivalent to about 667 square meters). 

Mary Ann Sayoc, public affairs lead for the international seed grower and supplier East-West Seed Group, said China has been helping the Philippines to develop high-yield rice varieties through the Philippine-Sino Center for Agricultural Technology, or PhilSCAT. 

PhilSCAT, which is based in the northern Philippine province of Nueva Ecija, was established in 2000 through a US$5 million grant from China. The center has tested and developed high-yielding varieties that suit the Philippines’ soil conditions for the past 20 years. PhilSCAT has so far developed varieties which have the potential to produce 12 metric tons of rice per hectare or three times the national average,

Sayoc said the Philippines can also learn from China’s huge investment in irrigation and farm infrastructure. This is especially crucial as the pandemic has shown some key problems in local agriculture.

One of these problems is bottlenecks in the supply chain. Sayoc cited reports of farmers dumping their vegetable harvests as the lockdown prevented them from delivering their produce. 

This created a problem not only for the farmers who lost their incomes but for residents of Metro Manila who depend on other provinces for food supply. The capital region, home to more than 10 percent of the country’s 107 million population, is a highly-urbanized area with no farm land.

The difficulty in transporting food products has since been resolved, with Philippine Agriculture Secretary William Dar assuring the unhampered delivery of food and other agricultural goods. But logistical difficulties remain just one of the challenges that Filipino farmers face. 

The produce delivery disruptions, for instance, shows that most Filipino farmers still need training on marketing, processing and information technology, according to Iloisa Romaraog-Diga, co-founder of e-commerce site Session Groceries.

She said instead of dumping undelivered vegetables, farmers could have been trained to process these vegetables into pickles and other food products. 

Romaraog-Diga works with farmers in the northern Philippines province of Benguet, where she helps them to deliver their vegetables directly to consumers through online markets. She said many farmers are still unaware that mobile phones and Internet technology can help them earn more and minimize wastage.  

“Most farmers just harvest their crops and bring these to the trading post to sell. They don’t know that you can use your mobile phone to pre-sell your products to your target clients,” Romaraog-Diga told China Daily.

Adriano at the Philippine agriculture department said the sector is considered a priority during the pandemic as it contributes to food security. But such efforts need to go beyond mere lip service and should be reflected in the Philippine government’s actual budgetary allocation for the agriculture sector. 

“Agriculture contributes 10 percent to the GDP, but do you know how much (fiscal allocation) it gets (in the national budget)? It’s less than 3 percent of the total budget,” he said. 

Adriano said that other businesses – like food processors, hotels and restaurants – also rely on farmers for raw materials, expanding the agriculture sector’s contribution to the country’s economy.

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For this year’s budget, the Philippine government allotted 62.29 billion pesos (US$1.3 billion) to the agriculture department. This is equivalent to roughly 1.5 percent of the total 4.1 trillion pesos budget for 2020. Agriculture Secretary Dar has proposed a 284.4-billion peso-budget for his department in 2021.

But more than governmental interventions and policies, Adriano said in order to transform the agricultural sector it is more important to bring about a radical change in the mindset of policymakers. 

“Most legislators and intellectuals think agriculture is backward while industrialization and urbanization are modern. We need to change this way of thinking,” he said.