A bright spot in an otherwise lacklustre year  2025 for the Philippine economy is the news that the entire agricultural sector grew  at 3.1 %--the highest in eight years-- for the whole year, having surprised ever one by growing at 7 % in the second quarter, led by poultry and crops.  This is an encouraging sign that the BBM government is delivering on its promise of assigning the highest priority  to food security.  A growth of 3.1 % may seem unimpressive but we have to consider how this Achilles heel of the Philippine economy had been doing for the last two decades, growing at close to 0 % annually.

              According to a comprehensive OECD analysis of Philippine agricultural production, between 2013 and 2022, agricultural output grew at an average annual rate of only about 0.2 %--significantly lower than the global averages.  This reflected a period of very modest expansion in the farm sector, which accounts for less than 10 % of GDP but represents 22% of the labor force, clearly exposing the very low productivity of farm workers and, therefore, the very high rate of poverty in the countryside which can be as high as 40% in some rural regions.  The poorest of the poor in the Philippines are the small farmers, landless farm workers, sustenance fisherfolks and the slash and burn farmers.  This situation is a result of a long-standing neglect of the agricultural sector by one Government to another as can be discerned from the absence of farm to market roads, irrigation systems, post-harvest facilities and other services needed by the millions of agrarian reform beneficiaries.

              This is in stark contrast with some of our ASEAN neighbors like Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam (as well as Taiwan) who also implemented thorough going agrarian reform programs but were able to grow their agricultural sector at 2 to 3 % per annum during the last twenty years.  It must be affirmed that what caused the very poor performance of Philippine agriculture was not the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).  Our neighbors had even more thorough going programs of dividing their large land holdings into small farm units.  In fact, in a recent visit to Vietnam, I found out that the average holding of a Vietnamese farmer is less than one hectare, not very different from that  in the Philippines.  What went wrong was not the fragmentation into small farm units but the inability of inept or negligent governments to deliver the support services needed by the agrarian beneficiaries to make their small holdings productive, starting with the indispensable farm to market roads.  A study of what Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam did to help their small farmers rise above poverty will show how the State in these countries literally showered their agrarian farm beneficiaries with all the support needed to render their respective farm holdings highly profitable.  In Thailand, it was the late King himself who was the most enthusiastic advocate of agricultural development.

              Let us not cry over spilt milk, however.   There are signs that the present Administration is learning from the mistakes and negligences of the past and is poised to replicate the feat of our neighbors like Thailand and Vietnam who have been growing their agricultural sector at 2 to 3 % yearly.  The year 2025—despite the gloomy macroeconomic results—may be the beginning of a new era for Philippine agriculture. It helps to have a competent and street smart Secretary of Agriculture in the person of Secretary Francis Tiu Laurel who has surrounded himself with some of the brightest and most experienced agricultural experts.  There is a high probability that the agricultural, fisheries, and forestry (AFF) sector will match the 3% annual growth of our neighbors for the remaining years of the present Administration, leaving a most important legacy to the next Administration that should continue for at least another six years giving the highest priority to food security.  We have a long way to go to match the agricultural successes of some of our ASEAN neighbors.  Just to cite a relevant statistic that indicates how far more advanced some of our neighbors in agricultural development, Vietnam’s annual export of agricultural products has reached $60 billion co

there is now a strong coalition among the private business sector, civil society and the academe to address the challenge of making small farms highly productive through different means of consolidating them to attain economies of scale. One outstanding example is the partnership between the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), the University of Asia and the Pacific’s Center for Food and Agribusiness and a handful of agribusiness entrepreneurs to promote the consolidation of small farms in various regions of the Philippines to achieve higher productivity in the agricultural sector in order to help the Government to attain the average of 2 to 3 % growth in agriculture in the coming years.  This will also help the present and future Administrations to accelerate the GDP growth rate from the average of about 6 % over the last fifteen years to the desired 8 % that will help bring the poverty incidence to single-digit levels in the near future. The lead organization in this initiative, SEARCA, has positioned itself as a catalyst for inclusive, climate-resilient, and innovation-driven agricultural development in Southeast Asia.  Consistent with its very mission as a think tank, addressing food insecurity, rural poverty and environmental degradation remains paramount.

              To promote the objective of increasing the productivity of Philippine agriculture, SEARCA and its partners organized a Food and Agribusiness Forum to present very specific models of consolidation that have been successful.  As a background material for the Forum, a position paper was prepared by the staff of the Center for Food and Agri Business.  The paper pointed out that Philippine agriculture is highly fragmented.  According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture and Fisheries, the average farm size in the country saw a 53.4 % decline within a decade from 1.7 hectares in 2012 to 0.79 hectares, signaling further fragmentation of productive land (PSA, 2025).  Unconsolidated lands limit the productivity and market access.  More recently, a PIDS assessment of the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act highlighted how integration and consolidation initiatives can enhance  productivity and market efficiency, demonstrating the tangible benefits of consolidation.

              When it comes to policy, the Department of Agriculture (DA) launched the Farm and Fisheries Clustering and Consolidation Program (F2C2) in 2020, which was meant to consolidate farms and fish ponds into 50-to-100-hectare blocks.  Yet implementation challenges, such as farmer participation, governance structures, and support services demonstrate that consolidation requires more than administrative clustering; it must be backed up by enabling policies, partnerships, and sustainable business models.  The participation of the private sector is indispensable. To be continued.