A Revolution Of Our Times! Landownership Out, Bandownership In
Here is another Brave New World PH!
54 days ago from today, 28 September 2020, The Editorial of The Manila Times predicted a modern revolution in PH Agriculture brought about not by a presidential decree but by a department head’s Administrative Order, AO, saying[
The Department of Agriculture has set into motion a program of consolidation and clustering in the nation’s farm and fisheries sector that will, if it is allowed to be carried out as designed, completely transform Philippine agriculture from a perennial laggard to one of the country’s economic strengths.
“That will… completely transform Philippine agriculture” from being a laggard to being a source of power.
The Times’ editorial is in fact boldly titled, “DA Consolidation Program Will Save PH Agriculture” – and let us thank God it is worth saving!
(The DA head) signed… AO 27 on 05 August 2020, auspiciously marking his first year of service as the country’s agriculture chief. He said that many countries have long adopted farm and fishery clustering to increase food production levels, improve farmers’ and fishers’ incomes, and provide better access to resources, technologies, and markets for farmers and fisherfolk.
The AO calls for a “Farm and Fisheries Clustering and Consolidation (F2C2) Program.” DA Chief/Secretary of Agriculture William Dar says the F2C2 is “the first formal, comprehensive, and holistic government initiative to be implemented at the national level.” (management image[2] from Quora)
In baseball parlance, “holistic” means it covers all the bases. If you ask me, F2C2 is comprehensivewhere the Agricultural Land Reform Code, RA 3844, signed by President Diosdado Macapagal in 1963, is fragmentary. RA 3844 is more about landownership and has nothing about managing the land to make it more productive so that the farmer can be more prosperous.
Not landownership, F2C2 is more about what I call bandownership, that is, where as in a musical band, everything plays out for the music that is good for all. Common ownership – i.e., formally or informally, the land is ours. Landownership, which the activist pro-farmer groups insist must prevail, has shown success in ownership but failure in management.
The farm operations must be shown to be productive and profitable – and for the farmer and his family a resulting life of prosperity.
Mr Dar said:
The F2C2 program is needed to enable the agriculture and fishery (sectors) to attain economies of scale, and thus achieve cost-efficient production, (harvesting), processing and marketing operations, subsequently increasing farmers’ and fishers’ incomes.
Economies of scalemeans even as the volume of production increases, the unit cost decreases. Impossible under landownership.
Additionally, Mr Dar says, “We will count on the strong support of farmers’ groups and local government units to successfully undertake our joint F2C2 program.” He notes that “the first major challenge is consolidating the country’s fragmented small farm holdings.”
On my part, I note that the first major challenge is to educate the farmers on both entrepreneurship and bandownership.
Until farmers accept that their prosperity lies in farm management and not in land ownership, Agriculture will keep them Poor!@517
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