Agri empowerment vital to address farmer scarcity

CEBU, Philippines - The government, together with the private sector and non-government organizations, aims to empower the agriculture sector through entrepreneurship to grow the interest of the public and eventually address the shortage of farmers.

The agricultural industry in Cebu is threatened with the scarcity of farmers that could be attributed to the aging issues and urban employment.

Cebu City agriculturist Joselito Baclayon shared that existing farmers are getting older over the years while young individuals who have the potential to be farmers are actually more inclined to work in the city.

This could possibly hamper the food production in the province that might lead to food shortage in the future, he said.

He then cited that the city government is aggressively working out on growing the interests of the youth to be part of the new breed of food producers through skills trainings, farm technology orientation and entrepreneurship programs for farmers.

The farmers’ entrepreneurship program, for instance, is able to initially organize 30 farmers in Cebu City to produce crops that could be bought by the Jollibee Foods Corporation. These crops include leafy vegetables, mangoes, fruits, calamansi and hot pepper among others.

This is also in collaboration with the National Livelihood Development Corporation that facilitates the funding for the program and the Lamac Multipurpose Cooperative which gathers the income for the farmers and distributes it to them.

The farmers who are under this program had to undergo training last July to prepare for the test market targeted by January of next year.

Baclayon noted that this program is designed to develop a farmer to become a businessman through agro-enterprise.

He added that unlike the usual trading of crops at present where the produce of the farmer will be picked up by traders and middlemen, the farmers’ entrepreneurship program enables the farmer to directly deal with the buyer and come up with a fair share of earnings.

To further empower farmers, he said that improved assistance in terms of financial, production marketing and technology should be extended to the industry.

Baclayon also advised the academe to take active involvement in the integration of agriculture in the educational curriculum and facilitation of urban gardening in schools. He further encouraged out-of-school youth and high school graduates to venture into food production.

To date, Cebu City has 15,000 farmers. /JMD (FREEMAN)