Why our agriculture lags behind our Asean neighbors

POLICY makers, academics, media personnel, leaders of civil society and people's organizations, and social media policy kibitzers often ask why despite our relatively abundant natural resources and excellent institutions in higher learning for agriculture, our agriculture sector lags behind that of our Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) neighbors. In particular, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and now Vietnam's agriculture has surpassed the productivity performance of our agricultural sector. As a result, their agricultural products are competitively priced, they export a variety of agricultural commodities and their farmers and fishers are economically better off than ours.

Having been immersed in the literature on the subject for more than three decades, previously as a professor at the University of the Philippines at Los Baños (UPLB) and later as a researcher cum consultant of a number of international organizations delving into agricultural development, I can easily identify a number of reasons (not in the order of causation) to this so-called conundrum.