Press Release
August 31, 2008

Pinoy farmers getting fewer & older, Loren warns
Senator bats for increased support for agricultural colleges
To produce new breed of young, tech savvy, highly productive farmers

Amid soaring food prices and worsening hunger, Sen. Loren Legarda said the government should find ways to augment in a big way the budgetary support for state-run agricultural colleges, to enable them to quickly develop a new generation of young and highly productive farmers.

"We desperately need young blood to drive our farms. Studies have shown that the average Filipino farmer is now 55 years old. Sadly, very few young Filipinos are now going into farming," said Legarda, chairperson of the Senate committee on economic affairs.

"If the trend continues, our farms will continue to decline, and food production will deteriorate irreversibly," warned Legarda, also chairperson of the Senate committee on social justice and rural development.

The results of the latest Census of Agriculture indicate that some 9,900 farms are being erased every year from the country's inventory of arable lands. Legarda blamed the problem on the lack of new farmers and the indiscriminate conversion of farmlands.

"We have a network of state-run agricultural schools nationwide. Over the years, these colleges, except for the University of the Philippines at Los Baños, have deteriorated due to neglect. We should revitalize these schools by providing them increased subsidy," Legarda said.

The senator also urged the Department of Agriculture and the Commission on Higher Education to quickly draw up special crash courses on modern farming systems and entrepreneurship.

"It has become absolutely imperative for us to cultivate a fresh breed of young farmers that are technologically savvy, driven to be entrepreneurs and surplus-oriented," Legarda said, adding that old generation farmers have been primarily subsistence-oriented.

The senator likewise proposed a special program that would spur graduates of agricultural schools to pursue farm-related businesses.

"We should encourage graduates of farming-related courses as well as aspiring entrepreneurs to engage in agribusiness by providing them access to low-cost capital and special post-graduate training," Legarda said.

Legarda proposed that a portion of the P17-billion annual funding for the implementation of the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Program through 2015, be used to revitalize agricultural schools and to support young farmers.

She said the government could also tap the P6-billion Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund.

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