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Week 2 Lecture

Agriculture is a vital industry in the Philippines, encompassing forestry, crop production, livestock, and aquaculture, contributing 20% to GDP and employing 39.8% of the labor force. The sector faces challenges such as land conversion, reliance on chemical fertilizers, environmental damage, and inadequate funding for critical programs. Major crops include rice, corn, and coconut, with significant exports to countries like the US and Japan, but productivity remains low and the sector is burdened by various issues.

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Nelvie Jay Crodua Escototo
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10 views

Week 2 Lecture

Agriculture is a vital industry in the Philippines, encompassing forestry, crop production, livestock, and aquaculture, contributing 20% to GDP and employing 39.8% of the labor force. The sector faces challenges such as land conversion, reliance on chemical fertilizers, environmental damage, and inadequate funding for critical programs. Major crops include rice, corn, and coconut, with significant exports to countries like the US and Japan, but productivity remains low and the sector is burdened by various issues.

Uploaded by

Nelvie Jay Crodua Escototo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Philippine

Agriculture
• Agriculture in the Philippines is one, if not the essential industry
in the country. It consists of forestry, crop production, livestock
farming, and aquaculture cultivation. Its output sustains the
local demand and considered to be essential commodities within
the country. Commercial crops assist both the agricultural
export industry as well as the domestic demand and
consumption.
• The country's agriculture sector is made up of 4 sub-
sectors: farming, fisheries, livestock, and forestry (the
latter 2 sectors are very small), which together employ
39.8 percent of the labor force and contribute 20 percent
of GDP.
• The country's main agricultural crops are rice, corn,
coconut, sugarcane, bananas, pineapple, coffee, mangoes,
tobacco, and abaca (a banana-like plant).
• Secondary crops include peanut, cassava, camote (a type
of rootcrop), garlic, onion, cabbage, eggplant, calamansi
(a variety of lemon), rubber, and cotton. The year 1998
was a bad year for agriculture because of adverse weather
conditions. Sector output shrank by 8.3 percent, but it
posted growth the following year. Yet, hog farming and
commercial fishing posted declines in their gross revenues
in 1999. The sector is burdened with low productivity for
most of its crops.
• The Philippines exports its agricultural products around the
world, including the United States, Japan, Europe, and ASEAN
countries (members of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations). Major export products are coconut oil and other
coconut products, fruits and vegetables, bananas, and prawns (a
type of shrimp). Other exports include the Cavendish banana,
Cayenne pineapple, tuna, seaweed, and carrageenan. The value
of coconut-product exports amounted to US$989 million in 1995
but declined to US$569 million by 2000. Imported agricultural
products include unmilled wheat and meslin, oilcake and other
soybean residues, malt and malt flour, urea, flour, meals and
pellets of fish, soybeans and whey.
Concerns in the Phil Agriculture
• rampant conversion of agricultural land into golf courses, residential
subdivisions, and industrial parks or resorts. Small land-holders find it more
profitable to sell their land to developers in exchange for cash, especially since
they lack capital for seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and wages for hiring workers to
plant and harvest the crops.
• Farmers' continued reliance on chemical-based fertilizers or pesticides that have
destroyed soil productivity over time. In recent years however, farmers have been
slowly turning to organic fertilizer, or at least to a combination of chemical and
organic inputs;
• Environmental damage. Coral-reef destruction, pollution of coastal and marine
resources, mangrove forest destruction, and siltation (the clogging of bodies of
water with silt deposits) are significant problems;
• The agriculture sector has not received adequate
resources for the funding of critical programs or projects,
such as the construction of efficient irrigation systems.
• The fisheries sector is divided into 3 sub-sectors:
commercial, municipal, and aquaculture (cultivation of the
natural produce of bodies of water). In 1995, the
Philippines contributed 2.2 million tons, or 2 percent of
total world catch, ranking it twelfth among the top 80 fish-
producing countries. In the same year, the country also
earned the distinction of being the fourth biggest
producer of seaweed and ninth biggest producer of world
aquaculture products.
Major crops in the
Philippines and Their
Distribution

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