RP food security threatened by rapid decline in farm hectarage

The rapid decline in farm hectarage threatens to undermine the country’s long-term food security, Negros Oriental Rep. Herminio Teves said.

Government must put in check the indiscriminate conversion of farmlands for non-agricultural use, and redouble efforts to help farmers boost their productivity, said Teves who chairs the House special committee on globalization.

The results of the latest Census of Agriculture show that some 9,900 farms are being wiped out yearly from the country’s inventory of arable lands.

The total number of farms nationwide dropped by 100,000 from 4.6 million in 1991 to 4.5 million in 2002, resulting in the decline of aggregate farmlands from 9.975 million hectares to 9.185 million hectares over the same period, according to Teves.

"We lost an estimated 790,000 hectares of farmlands in the 11 years from 1991 to 2002," he said.

Not only are farms getting fewer, they are also getting smaller.

Teves said the census results showed that the average farm size decreased from 2.16 hectares to 2.04 hectares, or by 1,200 square meters.

The regions that suffered the greatest reduction in farmlands were Central Luzon, the Calabarzon (Cavite-Laguna-Batangas-Rizal-Quezon) and Western and Central Mindanao.

Teves, meanwhile, stressed the need for government to strengthen financial and other forms of support to agrarian reform beneficiaries to discourage them from abandoning their lands.

"The only way we can make up for the decrease in farmlands is to improve the productivity of every farm," he pointed out.

He said government should accelerate the implementation of the Agriculture and Fisheries and Modernization Program to help quickly revitalize farm productivity nationwide.

"Food security – adequate food supply at affordable prices – is crucially important to the country’s long-term economic and political stability. And we cannot achieve food security if our farm systems continue to deteriorate," Teves stressed.