BOTOLAN, Zambales—In this wooded campus of the President Ramon Magsaysay State University (PRMSU) that overlooks the sea at Barangay Porac in this town, hundreds of youngsters are planting the seeds of a sustainable future for Zambales.
These are the students—all 407 of them—who are taking agricultural courses at PRMSU’s College of Agriculture and Forestry.
The number of students here wanting to learn about farming could be a tell-tale sign of a significant shift that may impact food security and sustainability in the province.
In a memorandum circular last year that launched a grants program to encourage youth participation in farming, the Department of Agriculture (DA) noted that with about 45 percent of the Philippine population facing moderate or severe food insecurity—according to the 2023 report on world food security and nutrition by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)—the national decline in farming becomes an increasing concern.
And while experts say that threats to food security include natural disasters, climate change, conflict, and market factors like price fluctuations, the waning interest in farming appeared to pose a critical challenge.
Citing figures from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the DA pointed out that the farming population in the country has been decreasing from 2014 to 2018, with about 9.7 million persons employed in the agricultural sector out of a total population of 110.4 million in 2019. That was less than 9 percent.
Meanwhile, the average age for Filipino farmers now stands at between 57 and 59 years old, because young Filipinos reportedly shunned agriculture in part due to poor income. This “raises concerns about who will carry out the important task of farming in the coming years,” the DA said in its 2023 circular.
Green is ‘in’
Eighteen-year-old Denise Bea Umiten, 19-year-old Lhane Gebrielle Moises, and 34-year-old Ryan Ferrer are among those taking agriculture studies at PRMSU’s Botolan Campus. But this was not their first choice for an education, which they know would ultimately be their occupation.
“Initially, I was not inclined to do farming,” Ryan reveals to the BusinessMirror in a recent interview.
He says he first studied Psychology at the PRMSU Main Campus in Iba town, but the pandemic experience made him realize just how important food production is—and how there is a need to sustain the viability of their family farm.
Now taking up soil science, Ryan learned that farming is not as easy as it seemed. “Actually, it’s complicated. But we are learning a lot here. And with what knowledge we get, I’m sure many doors will open for us when we graduate.”
Like Ryan, Lhane and Denise also see the opportunity to work abroad as a major draw for students pursuing agriculture these days.
Lhane’s first choice was Nursing, then somebody recommended agriculture, so she took up crop science. Later on, she saw that animal science was more interesting and thus had shifted to this study.
“With our experience here in school, there are a lot of doors we can choose from, although it will all be agri-focused” Lhane asserts. “We can do farm management, put up our own agri-business, or even go into teaching.”
“Up to now, there seems to be discrimination against farmers, who are sometimes looked down upon,” observes Denise, who is taking up animal science. “But we need to prove this wrong. Right now, there is a huge demand for agriculture graduates abroad—in New Zealand, Australia, and even Japan. For me, I would grab any opportunity that comes my way—I might go abroad to work, then return to the Philippines to apply whatever I have learned in other places.”
Ryan agrees: “We will be a farmer always. If there would be some opportunity abroad, I may also take it. But it seems like the better option would be to stay in the Philippines and help improve the farm industry. Maybe I would even stay here [at PRMSU] and teach.”
New wave
FOR the first semester of schoolyear 2024-2025, PRMSU’s College of Agriculture and Forestry (CAF) has enrolled a total of 654 students, 407 of whom are taking up Agriculture, major in either Animal Science or Crop Science. Of these, 223 are male and 184 are female.
The number of enrollees this year is, so far, the highest in the history of CAF, says Dr. Jocelyn B. Angeles, the college dean and herself a graduate of Agricultural Engineering. She further notes a continuous increase in enrollees for agriculture courses since 2018, when a national government program was launched for scholarship in agriculture.
According to CAF records, students enrolled in Bachelor of Science in Agriculture numbered 180 for the first semester, 164 for the second semester, and 64 for mid-year term for schoolyear 2018-2019.
In the succeeding years, semestral enrolment rose, respectively, to 190 and 187 for first and second semesters, and 76 for summer for SY 2019-2020;. The numbers were 248, 232, and 182 for SY 2020-2021; 301, 262, and 148 for SY 2021-2022; and 335, 322, and 170 for SY 2022-2023.
“Making agriculture a priority course in 2018 is a big factor in reviving student interest in agriculture, as it made the course very much in demand in both the government and private sectors,” says Angeles.
Mechanization of the farming industry, as well as the introduction of technology, she adds, makes farming more attractive to younger people who develop an easy grasp of farm machineries operation.
Then, there is the demand for agriculture workers abroad, a thing Angeles admits contributes to some brain drain in the industry. As many as 20 percent of the students from PRMSU find work abroad—mostly in the dairy farms of New Zealand, or in greenhouse food factories of Japan, Canada, and Israel, she says.
“We can say that graduates here don’t go idle after leaving the campus,” Angeles says with pride. “They either go into farm management, or they become agri-entrepreneurs.”
Angeles says that the agricultural education at PRMSU-CAF provides students with a well-rounded body of knowledge and skills that they can apply right after graduation. Aside from the basics of crop and animal sciences, the enrollees learn integrated farming; extension program, which is in fact community involvement; research; agricultural economics; and marketing.
“We have very enthusiastic learners here,” Angeles adds.
Seeds of hope
ASIDE from formal educational institutions like PRMSU-CAF, off-campus learning sites are increasingly contributing to greater knowledge about farming—and greater interest for it among the youth in Zambales.
One of these is LA Farm, located at Sitio Olpoy in Barangay Amungan, Iba, Zambales, which started out as a hobby to keep owner Larraine Rico’s children busy during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We asked the help of the municipal agriculturist, who taught us seed selection, growing and planting seedlings, soil preparation and mulching, and then production of organic fertilizer and vermiculture,” says Rico.
“At first, we were just happy that we had free vegetables for the table, but the garden soon expanded and we were selling our harvest at the parking area, then at the talipapa, then the market. We even made door-to-door delivery for orders by regular customers,” Rico recalls.
From there, the farm grew to include sunflower and fruits. Following further training for Rico and her children, as well as some staff workers from the community, LA Farm received accreditation from the Department of Agriculture for Philippine Good Agricultural Practices (PhilGAP).
The farm is now an accredited agricultural learning site supervised by daughter Faith, who brings in learners mostly from the young generation, Rico says.
The BCV Farm nearby is another site that attracts visitors for its demonstration farm that focuses on organic farming and building climate-resilient farm facilities that reverse the negative impact of agriculture on the environment.
Here, seeds of hope for a greener, more food abundant tomorrow are implanted into visiting students, who learn about making carbonized rice hull for organic fertilizer, fermenting fruit juices that can be used for pest control, composting, and carbon sequestration from owner Boboy Valles and his staff of young agriculture professionals.
The farm is planted to various vegetables and fruits, including grapes.
Ella May Verar, a 25-year-old graduate of Agricultural Education from Guinobatan, Albay, is at home at BCV Farm as an officer for special projects that include orientation for farm visitors. And she is happy about how students appreciate agriculture better.
“They are obviously very much interested not just in the general concepts, but also in the techniques for better food production,” Verar observes. “They want to know how it is possible to harvest more when you use commercial fertilizers and pesticides less.”
Verar agrees that mechanization and technology have democratized farming even more and made it more acceptable to young people.
“There was a time when we were worried that if in the coming 12 years, we don’t develop a new generation of farmers, food security in the Philippines would suffer,” Verar recalls. “Now, we see much hope.”
Valles cautions, however, that with all the transfer of farming knowledge and technology, the coming generations of farmers would still have to ensure for themselves adequate resources for production, particularly land and capital.
“If they would just gain skill sets while land continues to fall into the hands of big corporations, they would remain ordinary workers. They would have to be technically competent professionals with access to resources, if they want to be successful in this business,” Valles says.
Starting ’em young
A GOOD starting point for agri-entrepreneurship may be in a government program designed to encourage active involvement among young farmers and fisherfolk in food security and agricultural development and modernization, as well as to propel them into agri-business and agri-entrepreneurship.
This is the Young Farmers Challenge (YFC) Program launched by the Department of Agriculture under the “Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act of 1997.”
Under the YFC Program, youth participants can avail themselves of either of the three components: YFC Start-Up, which provides financial grant assistance for new or start-up agri-fishery enterprises; YFC Upscale, which makes it possible for previous YFC winners to continue, improve, and upscale their current agri-business operations; and YFC Business Development Assistance, which provides YFC awardees with common-shared facilities, equipment for value-adding and processing, research and development, and trainings and capacity-building, among others.
The program is designed as a competition to encourage agri-business models that are innovative, have the potential to generate incomes comparable to incomes of salaried workers in urban areas, and integrate sustainability into their business strategy.
The competition starts at the provincial level, wherein awardees get P80,000 for each enterprise; followed by the regional level with additional financial grant of P150,000; and the national level, with P300,000 per awardee.
The DA has allotted 546 slots for awardees at the provincial level; 112 in the regional level; and 12 in the national level.
According to the Zambales Provincial Agriculture Office (PAO), 23 youth entrepreneurs have made it so far to the provincial level of the Young Farmers Challenge. These are for various projects that range from production of Rhode Island Red chicken, tower-type cultured mushroom, crayfish, and rabbit meat, to processing of tanglad jam.
Among these, two have made it to the regional competition, while one has reached the national level. This is the “KWAKtutubo” project of Philip Quitaneg Trinidad of Iba, Zambales, which fused the Kilusang Wais sa Agrikultura at Kaalaman group with the indigenous community (Katutubo) of Sitio Olpoy in Amungan, Iba, for a duck production enterprise.
The agri-business targets the “Lechon manok” market to give a twist to the taste, while offering new products like flavored salted eggs, mango-duck egg leche flan, egg drop burger, and other products like pre-marinated duck meat.
At the same time, the enterprise aims to produce organic fertilizer from duck manure.
With the YFC grant, capital meets technology and, thus, may pave the way for success in agriculture, as well as for a greener, more sustainable future.
