Agriculture is linchpin of the economy - I

That there has lately been a rising number of the youth opting for agriculture is an encouraging cultural trend toward development, if it be true. But yet, in most rural areas in the country, say, Cebu towns, for example, with their vacant lowlands and idle arable slopes, and the community lifestyle especially among the youth, serious doubts linger.

The Ilonggos can thank their lucky stars that after some 5 years of decreasing enrollment in agriculture, they have now 300% boom in enrollment in Central Philippine University. This is auspicious, now that Filipino farmers get older in their late ‘50s or early ‘60s as average age. The young generation up to age 25 now constitutes some 45% who generally shun the soil.

What a slap that the Archipelago is naturally agricultural, in geography and topography of islands and islets, four defined seasons though now getting also unpredictable, and fecundity of its soil. And yet, historical acculturation from Spanish and American influence turned Filipinos anti-heroes and slothful nemeses of the loamy earth.

Within three generations back, when farming was the hack-and-hoe of the tillable slopes and the lowlands’ carabao plowing, Filipinos then were lovers of nature. In Cabadiangan, the likes of Tatay Julian T, ‘No Jose-Indang A, brothers Yuson, Mano Karoy P, and Mano Binong B whose “katubhan” we used to “raid” coming from school, always had reserved “tipasi” and corn in their “kamalig” or “sibay”, like, frugal ants and squirrels stashing extra food.

 But now, the grim picture of imminent hunger for lack of food resources due to sloth toward food sufficiency, and aggravated by the atavism for bestial procreation, is the sad socio-economic reality: The countrysides are teeming with idle lowlands, uncultivated fields, fertile slopes and hills. They are lush with useless foliage eating the soil nutrients instead of producing staples, root crops, or cassava and camote, fruit trees, banana groves, and varied veggies for food or for sale; vast cogon, brushes and grassy copses abound; useless vines crawling idle hill patches; and other wild plants litter the empty vastness. There’s not even fallowing, or crop rotation, or small clearings of crop production. What a waste in production potentials. National leaders are sleeping on their jobs, with no clear policies toward agronomy as natural livelihood and economic linchpin, save for the “clean and green” pretense, like, tree-planting that goes to waste.

Like the chickens’ scratch-and-peck to stem hunger appears the rule. In most towns and barrios, the school periphery and narrow roadsides are crowded with makeshift stores – also put-up residential hovels rolled into one – as sad “excuses” for living ala wild mushrooms. Town and rural markets are also overcrowded by lean-tos and “barbecue” stands.

 Meantime, “tricycles”, “trisikads”, and the etymological obscene root word “habal” motorcycles, double as passenger carriers or “habal-habals” becoming less obscene. But again, their measly income for their over-sized families are hand-to-mouth basis on a kilo or two of rice or corn grits; but, definitely, no tomorrow, to borrow their term.

 Indeed, rural and suburban small-time wage earners who are inveterate clingers of least resistance, say, from 4-wheels down to tricycles, “trisikads” and “habal-habals”, reflect their obsession for “wheels”, especially for school drop-outs, or those unable to pursue school.

For the better-heeled folk earning and saving their vegetable and horticulture earnings and/or from backyard swine project, some splurge in buying the ubiquitous “multicabs”. These “multicabs” transport harvests to the market, and for buying inorganic fertilizers and insecticides which are deleterious to the soil in long spell.

Some high school graduates and “idlers” from the post-secondary often resort to driving these “wheels” as more “dignified” in hacking meager income from “habal-habals”, tricycles, and “trisikads” than sweating it out in the farms, as anathema to their manhood.

(To be continued)