Director Clint Hassan of the information and communications technology of the Department of Agriculture called on the information technology (IT) sector to help uplift the agricultural community through technology.
“You cannot eat IT. We need food. That is why it must help in producing food. That is the reason why we’re doing such initiative for the production of the food through technology,” Hassan said during the press conference of the TechUp Pilipinas Agri Summit last August 25.
Hassan is one of the technology experts invited during the summit, along with representatives of the banking and agribusiness sector.
His remarks came as a reaction to a World Bank study showing the decline of the contribution of the agriculture industry in the Philippine economy, from 30% in the 70s to 9.65%.
The report also shows that the aging average farmer population at an average of 57-59 years old could lead to a trouble in the future of the agriculture industry.
Considering that farmers only earn around P10,000-15,000 per harvest, the hard labor and high production cost it entails discouraged the youth from pursuing the agricultural business.
“As per projection, if we will not plant now, by the year 2050, we will have no more food to eat,” Hassan said.
The ICT director also admitted that farming has lost its appeal to the youth, especially those coming from the family of farmers, based on the evaluation and survey the agriculture department conducted nationwide.
“Based on our evaluation, we asked them if they want to go farming, most of them don’t want to go.” He added, “Most of them want to go to technology. That is why we are bringing the technology to the farmers, so they will go back to farming.”
Hassan said that there is a need to establish the identification of different land parcel of land for farmers, as one of the agency’s plan in addressing the problem for low production.
“We need a data basing of the farmers, same as the National ID System,” Hassan said.
He said that they are coordinating with the Department of Budget and Management, Department of Information and Communications Technology and other concerned inter agencies with regards to the proposed system.
