By Adrian H. Halili, Reporter
THE Department of Agriculture’s (DA) budget requests for next year should reflect a high priority for farm consolidation, which it needs to pursue to enhance production efficiency, an analyst said.
“They have to invest in farm clustering and consolidation and convince the private sector to partner with farmers’ cooperatives and associations,” Former Agriculture Undersecretary Fermin D. Adriano said via Viber.
At a budget hearing last week, Agriculture Secretary Francisco P. Tiu Laurel, Jr. said that the DA will focus its spending on low-productivity areas.
“What we asked for is P500 billion, and right now it’s only at P200 billion. If we can get P300 billion… I think that would be a big help,” Mr. Laurel told reporters on the sidelines of the hearing.
The Agriculture department had been allocated P200.13 billion under the 2025 National Expenditure Plan (NEP), against the P167 billion the administration allocated to the department in the 2024 NEP.
The DA’s proposed P500-billion budget for 2025, would have prominently featured agricultural infrastructure projects like cold storage facilities, farm to market roads, and the DA’s flagship solar power irrigation project.
Instead, the infrastructure budgets were dominated by flood-control proposals by the Department of Public Works and Highways, while the budget for the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) was reduced.
Under the 2025 NEP, the NIA’s allocation was cut to P42.57 million from P70.22 million a year earlier.
Leonardo A. Lanzona, an economics professor at the Ateneo De Manila, said the lack of land continues to constraint agricultural productivity.
“As the land cannot support a lot of labor to remain productive, industries will need to be developed… We need to increase its productivity as labor (and) land resources are shifted to other sectors,” he said via Messenger.
Mr. Lanzona added that if not properly addressed, the high cost of food will continue to hinder the country’s structural transformation and poverty reduction programs.
“Agriculture remains the single effective mechanism for pushing poverty down to single digits,” he said.
He added that the government needs to subsidize agriculture as it tries to achieve upper middle-income status.