Arsenio M. Balisacan
https://doi.org/10.57043/transnastphl.2004.4701
Abstract
The paper reviews the performance of Philippine agriculture in an Asian context. It shows that domestic policies and institutional bottlenecks, rather than the global environment for agricultural trade, explain much of the country’s comparatively weak performance in food production, employment creation, agricultural trade, and poverty reduction. Poor governance has also weakened the sector’s capacity to respond efficiently to urbanization influences, especially changes in consumption patterns and land use owing to the combined impact of population growth, rising incomes, and developments in information and technology. The “business as usual” approach to governing agriculture and the rural sector needs to be abandoned in favor of more aggressive governance reforms and strategic investment aimed at raising agricultural productivity and sustaining gains in farm incomes, reducing the “cost of doing business” in rural areas, and taking advantage of opportunities for growth offered by globalization.