Lessons from Europe - Part III

I really don't want to make readers sad. However, there are times when we have to face the facts, no matter how bad they look and how sad they make us.

I just hope the figures, instead of creating sadness, pose a challenge and have a positive effect on the way we look at the future of this country.

As promised in this column last week, I will mention the term "labor productivity" in this issue. Simply defined in the context of economics, "labor productivity" is the average value of production per employed member of the labor force.

As I did in the other parts of this series on the "lessons" I learned from Europe, I will compare the Philippine situation with those of the countries I recently visited: France, Germany and Netherlands (or Holland). In today's column I will focus on the agriculture sector.

France has an agricultural employment of around 1.09 million workers with annual production valued at 50.9 billion US dollars or a labor productivity of 46,688 US dollars per worker. Germany is even higher at 67,914 US dollars and Holland has 51,895 US dollars. With productivity that runs from 2.5 to 3.7 million pesos a year, no wonder their farmers are millionaires.

In the Philippines? It is a very, very low 1,066 US dollars (or about 58,000 pesos per year). No wonder many of our farmers are living below the poverty line.

Mahirap nga mapaniwalaan, pero totoo. Talagang ganyan kababa ang "labor productivity" sa Pilipinas.

Such a huge gap dramatizes the low level of technology that we are generally using in the entire production process, from choosing sites for planting up to marketing our produce.
It is downright discouraging, isn't it? Parang wala na tayong pag-asa.

Our delegation of 9-members was just awed by the extent and quality of cultivation of farms in Germany where we toured rural areas. We did not focus on agriculture but on governance, but everywhere we went, land was utilized in a way that was capital and not labor intensive - using machines to promote productivity and most probably using extensive research and development to boost productivity per unit of land area and per worker.

No land was left idle.

We took note that land cultivation is not even year round in these temperate countries which have to go through the cold months of autumn and winter.

Using human and natural resources to the max while employing the latest technologies could be the biggest reasons for such high productivity. There seems to be no other explanation.

Obviously, many areas in the Philippines are not fully utilized for agricultural purposes and idle or underutilized lands are everywhere.

Agrarian reform was thought to be a major solution. After more than twenty years, it is clear that just dividing the land and distributing them to more owners will not be enough. These lands have to be cultivated and made more productive. I will modify that: very productive. Has such an objective been achieved?

Hindi. O sige na….hindi pa. We are still working on it.

There are even statistics showing that in some parts of the rural areas of the country, the number of people who are getting poorer is increasing. Talaga? Talaga!

Maybe, a couple more years are needed to reach much higher levels of productivity. Ganyan, be optimistic. If we won't be able to do it then our agricultural productivity will remain low and the huge gap will even become bigger. We should not let it happen.

If we relate this to politics, then whoever wins in the 2004 Presidential elections should put agriculture on top of his/her development agenda.