TLEd 205 - Agri-Fishery Arts Part I- Introduction to Agriculture and Fishery Arts

Course Outcome 1:
Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of agriculture and fisheries
concepts, situation, problems and prospects, statutes,
and its role in development
and
Course Outcome 2:
Apply research-based knowledge and principles of
agriculture and fishery in teaching and learning

CHAPTER II
THE AGRI-FISHERY SECTOR SITUATIONER, PROBLEMS,
PROSPECTS, AND STATUTES
Duration: 7.5 hrs

Introduction

It is very interesting to view the past and present situations of the agriculture and fishery sectors of our
country as well as of other countries. These data/information will give us the big picture on what happened in
the past that brought their consequences to the present and how will the past and present affect the future.
Looking into the problems and prospects of the agri-fishery sectors will hopefully prompt the people of today
to do something to improve the future. As future agri-fishery educators, it is very important to recognize these
situations so that you can inculcate into the minds of young learners the importance of what we do today to the
future of the agri-fishery sectors in particular and the economy and environment in general.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the module, students must have:

1. Identified, analyzed and interpreted the situation of the agriculture and fishery sectors in the country;
2. Enumerated and elaborated on the problems and prospects of agriculture and fishery sectors in the
country; and
3. Related agriculture and fishery statutes and cite examples situations/scenarios of these laws.

References

Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016. Competitive & Sustainable Agriculture & Fisheries Sector

Cielito F. Habito and Roehlano M. Briones. 2005. Philippine Agriculture Over the Years: Performance, Policies
and Pitfalls in Philippine Agriculture Over the Years: Performance, Policies and Pitfalls, a paper presented
during the “Policies to Strengthen Productivity in the Philippines” held in Makati City, June 27

Department of Agriculture’s Website. Undated. Statutes on Agriculture and Fishery

Rodriguez, Marita P. 2017. Review of Selected Philippine Policies and Laws on Fisheries and Voluntary
Guidelines for Securing Small-scale Fisheries
 TLEd 205 - Agri-Fishery Arts Part I- Introduction to Agriculture and Fishery Arts

Lesson 1. THE AGRI-FISHERY SECTOR SITUATIONER

Lesson Outcomes

At the end of the lesson, the students must have:

1. Relate the agriculture and fishery sectors performance of the country;

2. Examined existing situations of various crops, livestock and fishery products from legitimate sources;
and
3. Analyzed and interpreted agriculture and fishery databases as integral sector of the country’s economy

Lesson Content

COMPETITIVE & SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE & FISHERIES SECTOR

Adaptation from: Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016

Topic Page Number

COMPETITIVE & SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE & FISHERIES SECTOR

Assessment
-Sector Performance 102-108

… please find in the attached document/reference…

 TLEd 205 - Agri-Fishery Arts Part I- Introduction to Agriculture and Fishery Arts

PHILIPPINE AGRICULTURE OVER THE YEARS: PERFORMANCE, POLICIES AND PITFALLS

Adaptation from: Cielito F. Habito and Roehlano M. Briones. (portion only) Philippine Agriculture Over the Years:
Performance, Policies and Pitfalls, a paper presented during the “Policies to Strengthen Productivity
in the Philippines” held in Makati City, June 27, 2005

Although many still think of the Philippines as an agricultural economy, strictly speaking, it is not. Agriculture,
fishery and forestry directly account for just one-fifth (20 percent) of the economy’s aggregate domestic output
(GDP). Ever since the 1960s, the direct share of agriculture in the GDP had fallen below one-third, and by 1981,
the sector’s share had decreased to only 23 percent. Growth from this level was rather anemic, averaging 1.7
percent per annum during the period 1981-2003, compared to the average overall GDP growth of 2.6% over
the same period. While agriculture output was largely stagnant through the years, industry and especially
services significantly raised their output shares, particularly in the past two decades (Figure 1). Agriculture’s
importance looms larger when it comes to employment, with nearly two-fifths (i.e. 37 percent) of jobs currently
coming from the sector. Still, the services sector accounts for close to half of both output and jobs in the
economy. But if one considers agro-processing and agricultural inputs manufacturing and trading (i.e.
agribusiness sectors) along with basic agricultural production, about 40 percent of GDP and two-thirds of jobs
in the economy arise from agriculture (Tolentino et al. 2001). Unfortunately, agriculture also displays the most
erratic growth among the economy’s major sectors, with growth rates tending to fluctuate widely from quarter
to quarter (Figure 2). The sector’s recent growth performance manifests the same volatility. While the sector’s
full year real GDP growth performance was well within the target for 2004 and exceeded the preceding year’s
performance, the most recent quarters have seen dramatic slowdowns from previous quarters, due mostly to
unfavorable weather conditions. Notwithstanding these challenges, the critical role of the agriculture sector in
a country’s overall economic development as stylized in economic development literature is well known. First,
it provides food and vital raw materials for the rest of the economy. Second, it provides a significant market for
the products of the non-agricultural economy, as buyer of farm inputs as well as consumer goods and services
produced in the non-agricultural economy. And third, as the sector grows and modernizes in the face of limited
supplies of agricultural land, it releases surplus labor to the industry and services sectors. With 70 percent of
the country’s poor coming from the rural areas where agriculture is the dominant source of livelihood and
employment, the importance of agriculture to the Philippine economy cannot be overemphasized. Thus, the
Medium Term Philippine Development Plans (MTPDPs) of successive administrations have consistently
recognized the critical importance of energizing and modernizing the agricultural sector in the overall pursuit
of a vigorous and broad-based economic growth and development. But as we discuss below, success with this
goal has continued to be elusive. This paper reviews the trends in the Philippine agricultural sector’s
performance, and relates these to the policy environment within which the sector has operated through the
years. The next section specifically examines the trends in production and productivity of the sector. The
evolution of the policy environment that has influenced such performance is then reviewed in the following
section. The last section identifies the pitfalls that have hampered investments in the sector and stifled growth
in the agribusiness industry, and ends with a general indication of the needed interventions to overcome the
sector’s current hurdles.
Production and Productivity Trends Labor Productivity
Up until the 1970s, the Philippines’ agricultural performance, in terms of both agricultural Gross Value Added
(GVA) and agricultural exports, compared well with its neighbors and other Asian countries (Figure 3a). But by
the 1980s and 1990s, the country had lagged behind most of the countries in the region (Figures 3b and 3c).
This came as agricultural output growth had slowed down dramatically through the decades (Figure 4).
Moreover, the sector’s growth had been rather erratic in the 1990s, especially with the periodic occurrence of
the El Niñ o phenomenon that had appreciable impact on weather patterns and, consequently, agricultural
performance. Table 1 shows the average annual growth in GVA of major agricultural commodities since 1960.
What is clear from the table is that growth rates of all commodities, except for livestock and poultry, have been
slowing down over time. Furthermore, growth rates have been below the population growth rate, implying that
production has not been able to keep up with increasing population. Erratic and decelerating growth over the
past two decades is a major concern, as agriculture continues to employ a large bulk of the country’s poor.
Balisacan (2003) estimates that in 2000, the poverty incidence in agriculture was 46 percent, the highest
 TLEd 205 - Agri-Fishery Arts Part I- Introduction to Agriculture and Fishery Arts

among the major sectors (with the exception of mining). It also contributed 61.3 percent to population poverty,
far exceeding the next biggest sectors (construction, at 7.7 percent, and the unemployed, at 7.3 percent).
Employment in agriculture has been stagnant, even as overall employment continues to grow at a rate of about
2.4 percent per year from the 1990s onward (Figure 5). Hence, Philippine Agriculture over the Years page 3 of
38 while agriculture employed 36.4 percent of the labor force in 2003, this is now much lower than the 44
percent employed a decade earlier. This exit of employment out of agriculture has helped keep labor
productivity in agriculture growing at modest rates, roughly on par with the growth rate in total employment
(Figure 6). In common with other countries in Southeast Asia, such as Thailand and Indonesia, migration from
the agriculture to non-agriculture sectors has been driven by wage differentials across sectors, although
weakness in employment absorption in the other sectors has constrained the convergence of labor incomes
(Butzer, Mundlak and Larson 2003). Despite the mediocre growth of labor productivity, the 1990s actually was
a period of mild recovery for the sector, after sharply declining in the 1980s. Closer examination reveals that
within agriculture, labor productivity has stagnated in the crops subsector. The observed growth was therefore
probably due to increasing productivity in livestock and poultry, where use of improved technologies and
increasing scale of production considerably improved production efficiency (David 2003). Nevertheless, labor
productivity in Philippine agriculture compares favorably with other developing countries (Figure 7). The
Philippines’ labor productivity remains far ahead those of large, populous countries such as China and India; it
is also greater than the neighboring Southeast Asian countries of Vietnam, Indonesia, and even Thailand.
However, labor productivity lags behind countries with higher per capita incomes, such as Malaysia, Brazil, and
Chile. Moreover, some of the low productivity countries (China, India, and Vietnam) have experienced a more
rapid labor productivity growth in the 1990s. It may be noted that the low growth rate of labor productivity
reckoned in US$ in the 1990s is probably due to the depreciation of the exchange rate, as the Philippines was
one of those hit by the currency crisis of the late 1990s. Land productivity. It is not very meaningful to discuss
land productivity by highly aggregated agricultural categories. To maintain focus given the large number of
agricultural commodities, data is presented here only for the top five major crops in terms of production and
area, namely rice, corn, coconut, sugarcane, and banana. Coconut and sugarcane are traditional exports, while
banana is a nontraditional export. The yield performance of these major crops follows a checkered history
starting from the 1960s (Table 2). The growth rate of rice yield was fastest in the 1960s, and slowed down in
the 1970s as the Green Revolution technology diffused and neared 100 percent adoption. However, contrary
impressions notwithstanding, rice productivity growth picked up again in the 1980s before its recent
slowdown. Corn follows a similar pattern: rapid growth in the 1960s, a slowdown in the 1970s, before picking
up again subsequently. Unlike rice, however, corn has kept its yield growth fairly steady, with the spread of
hybrid yellow corn, the concentration of corn in productive areas, and the withdrawal of marginal land from
the subsistence farming of white corn (David 2003). A more detailed look at production, area, and yield trends
for the 1990s is provided in Table 3. Only corn and sugarcane have witnessed production declines from 1992-
2003; the Philippine Agriculture over the Years page 4 of 38 rest have grown at a decent pace. For example, rice
production rose from 9.5 million metric tons (MT) to 14 million MT. Part of this production growth is due to
growth in area planted: for each crop, hectarage has increased over the last decade. The marked exception is
corn, whose area has fallen quite rapidly over the period. In the 1990s, the growth in area was, however, mostly
outpaced by the output growth, due to yield increases. The significant exception is sugarcane; even corn, whose
output and area fell, saw a respectable increase in yield over the period. Interestingly, coconut experienced
yield growth quite late relative to the others, i.e. in the 1980s. This, however, coincided with an area decline,
combined with overall production growth, signifying withdrawal from marginal lands and increased yields
from productive areas. Sugarcane followed suit, with yield growth happening in the 1990s, although this was
quickly reversed by the following decade. In the case of bananas, the period of rapid yield growth occurred in
the 1970s, followed by a marked downturn, and a robust recovery in recent years. David (2003) points out that
yield growth has also been observed in other nontraditional exports such as pineapple and mango. Such growth
in yield may also be due to the adoption and spread of agricultural innovations (e.g. introduction of chemical
spraying in mango), which may have started off in the larger commercial operations, then diffused among
smallholders (e.g. in the case of pineapple). It should be pointed out that agricultural modernization is not
confined to cereals, despite the popular association between modernization and the Green Revolution
technologies. Balisacan (1993) pointed out that production growth did not primarily originate from rice; over
 TLEd 205 - Agri-Fishery Arts Part I- Introduction to Agriculture and Fishery Arts

the period 1960-1980, rice contributed only 16 percent of the growth in agricultural GVA. It was the fruits and
vegetables sector, particularly export crops such as banana, pineapple, and coffee, which contributed over one-
half of agricultural GVA growth. Comparisons with international experience suggest that the country is an
average performer in terms of land productivity. According to Rosegrant and Hazell (2000), from 1967 to 1995,
yield growth in developing Asia averaged 3.3 percent per year, with the highest growth experienced by China,
Indonesia, Pakistan, and Vietnam. The lowest growth performance occurred in Nepal; the Philippines is
somewhat in the middle. As in Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, yield growth in the
Philippines coincided with the period of the Green Revolution. In the South Asian countries, yield growth
accelerated in the 1980s. The same is true for Vietnam, when the country initiated a regime of agricultural
liberalization. Marginal productivity. All the foregoing are average measures of productivity. A more accurate
picture of productivity change is found at the margin: in fact, average productivity is useful only as a crude
approximation of marginal productivity. Measuring marginal productivity, however, requires more
sophisticated statistical methods. A common application of marginal productivity analysis is growth
accounting. Abstracting from measurement errors and random shocks, total output growth can be Philippine
Agriculture over the Years page 5 of 38 decomposed into the growth of factors of production, and the growth of
total factor productivity (TFP). Depending on the framework, the last term can be broken down into
technological change and improvements in production efficiency. Mundlak et al. (2004) present a
disaggregated breakdown of productivity growth (Table 4). For the Philippines, growth in agricultural output
was fairly steady up to the 1970s, then declined sharply, partly due to the deceleration in input growth.
However the decline in TFP growth is also a critical part of the story behind agricultural stagnation. The share
of TFP growth was fairly significant (over a quarter of output growth) up to the 1970s, but then subsequently
fell to less than 10 percent. Meanwhile, for Thailand and Indonesia, overall growth was fairly robust, and seems
to have been driven to a great extent by large and consistent growth of total factor productivity. For Thailand,
TFP accounts for about a third of growth, with the greatest contribution happening in the 1970s. In Indonesia,
TFP accounts for over 40 percent of growth, and in fact reaches near parity with factor growth by 1998. FAO
(2004) made a cross-country comparison of TFP growth, based on the Malmquist index. The growth rate of TFP
can be decomposed into an efficiency component, and a technological change component. For most of the
countries, the bulk of growth owes to technological change; only India registered negative growth in efficiency,
pulling down TFP growth to negative levels. From 1981–2000, TFP growth has been fastest for China and Chile;
on similar clip are Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, and Brazil. The computation for the Philippines is fairly
similar to the figure from Mundlak et al, and is quite low relative to other Asian economies. Cost
competitiveness. Cross-country comparisons of farmgate prices of various key agricultural commodities reveal
the poor state of Philippine agriculture’s competitiveness. Figures 8 to 12 show how Philippine farmgate prices
for rice, fresh fruits, beef, pork and chicken meat compare with those of selected Asian countries. With the
exception of chicken meat, wherein India has much higher prices, the Philippines consistently has the highest
farmgate prices for the above agricultural commodities, indicating lack of price competitiveness in the
international trading arena. While higher farmgate prices may at first glance appear to be favorable to Filipino
farmers, this ultimately redounds to lower welfare for Filipino consumers. And because lack of international
competitiveness constrains the potential for growth in the domestic agricultural enterprise sector, the Filipino
farmers – who are also consumers themselves – must ultimately bear the adverse consequences of our inferior
agricultural productivity and lack of cost competitiveness.
 TLEd 205 - Agri-Fishery Arts Part I- Introduction to Agriculture and Fishery Arts

Lesson 2. THE PROBLEMS, PROSPECTS, AND STATUTES

ON AGRICULTURE AND FISHERY

Lesson Outcomes

At the end of the lesson, the students must have:

1. Identified and elaborated the problems/challenges of agriculture and fishery sectors in the country;
2. Identified and elaborated the prospects of agriculture and fishery sectors in the country;
3. Proposed possible strategies/interventions to solve the problems in the agri-fishery sectors; and
4. Determined and assessed the implementation of various agri-fishery statutes.

Lesson Content

COMPETITIVE & SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE & FISHERIES SECTOR

Adaptation from: Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016

Topic Page Number

COMPETITIVE & SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE & FISHERIES SECTOR

Challenges
- Growth in production and productivity faces formidable constraints
- Households dependent on agriculture are especially vulnerable to climate variability 108-112
and extreme events
- Agricultural development is also undermined by flawed policies and institutions

Strategic Framework 113-119

… please find in the attached document/reference…

 TLEd 205 - Agri-Fishery Arts Part I- Introduction to Agriculture and Fishery Arts

STATUTES ON AGRICULTURE AND FISHERY

Accessed from: Department of Agriculture’s website

REVIEW OF SELECTED PHILIPPINE POLICIES AND LAWS ON FISHERIES AND

VOLUNTARY GUIDELINES FOR SECURING SMALL-SCALE FISHERIES
Adaptation from: Rodriguez, Marita P. 2017. Review of Selected Philippine Policies and
Laws on Fisheries and Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Small-scale Fisheries
TLEd 205 - Agri-Fishery Arts Part I- Introduction to Agriculture and Fishery Arts
 TLEd 205 - Agri-Fishery Arts Part I- Introduction to Agriculture and Fishery Arts

Activity/Performance Task

Task: Presentation, Analysis and Interpretation of Databases of Crops, Poultry, Livestock, and Fishery
Products
Direction:
1. After comprehending the various topics in the Chapter, search for 5-10 years agri-fishery databases on
production, consumption, prices, imports, or exports.
2. Choose at least one commodity/product from the following categories: a. crops b. animals and c.
fishery and get/secure data sets of the chosen commodities/products.
3. Present, analyze, and interpret the data sets per chosen commodity/product. (Note: if your resources
permit, present your output in “Power Point Presentation” or other ICT-based presentation)
4. Submit your output.

Activity/Performance Rubric

Criteria Rating Scale Remarks

1 2 3 4
(25%) Comprehensiveness in terms of scope of the
output
(20%) Logic/organization of thoughts/ideas in the
presentation of the datasets
(25%) Logic/organization of thoughts/ideas in the
analysis of the datasets
(30%) Logic/organization of thoughts/ideas in the
interpretation of the datasets
Weighted Mean Rating
 TLEd 205 - Agri-Fishery Arts Part I- Introduction to Agriculture and Fishery Arts

Learning Check

Answer the following vividly and substantially.

1. Identify two common/local crops and explain any problems that are related to their production, or
consumption, or any aspect and suggest possible intervention/s to solve such problems.
2. Identify two common/local livestock/animals and explain any problems that are related to their
production, or consumption, or any aspect and suggest possible intervention/s to solve such problems.
3. Identify two common/local fishery products and explain any problems that are related to their production,
or consumption, or any aspect and suggest possible intervention/s to solve such problems.
4. Elaborate on your own observations on the local implementation of any agriculture and fishery laws in
your community.
 TLEd 205 - Agri-Fishery Arts Part I- Introduction to Agriculture and Fishery Arts

Self-Reflection

From the Chapter, I learned ….

To further my learning, I will …..