Agriculture and the young

We’ve all heard the lament that young Filipinos are no longer interested in agriculture and farming as an occupation or career, and with it comes the fear that with a dwindling successor generation of farmers, our future food security is at risk. Guess what: data actually belie the supposed trend, suggesting that it’s little more than a myth widely held as unquestioned truth—at least at this time.

Data from the Commission on Higher Education showed annual enrollment in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries (AFF) courses to have nearly doubled between 2010 and 2020—that is, from 63,471 to 115,458. This figure had risen continuously from 2010 to 2016, when higher education enrollment significantly fell almost across the board. There is a ready explanation for this: 2016 was when the 2012 implementation of the K-12 basic education curriculum reduced the number of potential college freshmen because those who had completed four years of high school now had to stay for another two years. Since those two adjustment years, enrollment in AFF courses has resumed its upward trend. So is there really a decline in interest in agriculture among our youth, then?

Still, we cannot belittle common casual observations that farmers’ offspring now rarely want to take over from their parents on an occupation they see to have failed to lift their families out of poverty. I wrote before of a Bicolano farmer who complained about how his children no longer help on the farm: “Tinatamad na dahil nakapag-aral” and “Pag inutusan mo, hawak cell phone” (“He has become lazy because he got educated,” and “If you ask him to do anything, he can’t put down his cellphone”).

One might also argue that many of those who enroll in a college agriculture course do not necessarily intend or end up working on a farm, or in the AFF sector. Many end up in unrelated professions, having used an agricultural course as an “easy” way to obtain a college degree, especially when scholarships are offered for the course (and there are indeed many), and where college admission standards are lower than for other popular courses. This is the case at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, for example, where the cutoff scores in the UPCAT entrance exam tend to be set lower for BS Agriculture applicants, compared to other popular UPLB courses in the arts and sciences.

The challenge remains, then, to keep attracting young people to take up agriculture or agribusiness as a profession, whether or not with a college degree. And it should attract not just the less capable students, as if a recourse for those not good enough to handle a more “glamorous” course like computer science or engineering (i.e., when people say “mag-agriculture ka na lang”—in the same way I’ve heard Catholic priests complain of how parents would often tell their weaker sons, “mag-pari ka na lang.”)

This is why I was inspired by the story of young Benzone Kennedy Sepe, who I met over a year ago on his farm in Barangay Kapatagan, Digos City in Davao del Sur. I wrote about how he experimented and succeeded with planting apples out of curiosity, which led him to enroll in the BS Agriculture course at the Davao del Sur State College, even as he inspires many other young budding farmers with his vlog to think out of the box. More recently, I was heartened to hear young Denny de Guzman declare how his practicum work at the Jopat Integrated Farm in Mangaldan, Pangasinan had solidified his choice of agriculture as his favored career.

This leads me to the importance of learning sites for agriculture (LSAs) that the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) under the Department of Agriculture has been certifying for over 10 years now. I see them as valuable instruments for drawing more young people into agriculture. LSAs are model farms that can serve as venues for hands-on training of farmers and farmworkers.

But many feel underutilized in this regard, as funds to support capacity building for farmers, which is the devolved responsibility of local government units, are very limited, especially when governors and mayors fail to prioritize agriculture in their local development plans and programs. Meanwhile, the Department of Tourism has pursued the concept of farm tourism sites (FTS), with the ATI-certified LSAs as primary venues for this. It is when model farms certified as LSAs proactively attract visitors on field trips from surrounding schools as well as visits by families with children that they could be instrumental in drawing more young people to farming as a gainful enterprise. Even without conducting formal training for farmers, they would already be doing a great service to society if the farm visits and practicums they host convince more young people to choose agriculture as a favored career, the way Sepe and De Guzman have.

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