LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – Vice Governor Ericson ‘Tagel’ L. Felipe underscored the need for the government to establish a system that will allow the smooth knowledge transfer on agriculture from research to innovation that will pave the way for the realization of the country’s food security to address dependence on importation as a solution to the inadequate supply of agricultural products for the Filipinos.
Felipe was one of the attendees of a recent 5-day exposure trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh which was spearheaded by the Japan-based International Productivity Office (IPO) in partnership with the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP). “We have to admit that our country is way behind our Southeast Asian neighbors in terms of food security and we have to do a lot of catching up so that we will achieve food security for the Filipinos. The government has to do something to make our agriculture ready to provide the food on the table for our growing population,” Felipe stressed.
Bangladesh is the world’s 10th producer of agricultural crops despite being a third world country because it was able to first address its food security before exporting its extra produce to other countries.
He said that it was disheartening to learn that those responsible in spurring the agriculture sector of Bangladesh actually learned the strategies from the Philippines through their previous studies and eventually made their learning work in their own country that paved the way for their country to achieve food security.
The vice governor claimed that more than 15 years ago, Bangladesh had a serious problem on how to provide food on the table for its rapidly growing population that compelled the government to look for ways and means to improve the agriculture sector through learning from other countries like the Philippines and what people learned were used to turn the tide on the state of agriculture in the said country.
According to him, there should be a workable system on effective knowledge transfer to the agriculture industry stakeholders, especially the farmers, coupled with stringent monitoring to ensure the results of researches conducted by institutions is used on the ground to further improve the country’s food security and lessen the dependence on importation to provide food for the Filipinos.
Felipe stipulated that the results of studies are readily available in the various higher education institutions but the problem is the absence of a system that will allow the cascading of the results of the studies to the farmers for them to embrace and adopt the appropriate technology and innovation to improve their production.
“It is not only infrastructure that will improve the production of agricultural crops. There is also a need for the stakeholders to work on mechanization, innovation, technology, among others, to be able to improve the productivity and help in achieving food security for our country. We have to start now so that we will not be left behind to avoid our dependence on importation,” Felipe added.
He expressed his gratitude to the IPO and DAP for giving him a chance to have advance learning on how to improve the local agriculture industry to be able to contribute in the whole of nation approach to achieve food security for the Filipinos in the future.