I’AM A STRONG believer in education as an indispensable key to advancement. And I also believe that the grand strategy for a renaissance of agriculture should have education as a major component.

Sadly, the state of agricultural education in the country leaves much to be desired. This is a fact best shown by a study prepared by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on agricultural education in several countries, including the Philippines.

Here are pertinent excerpts from the study:

1. The economy of the Philippines is still largely dependent on the agricultural sector, which provides 22 percent of the gross domestic product. Nearly half of the labor force is employed in agriculture, and it is estimated that as much as 67 percent of the population is dependent on agriculture. More than half of the population still resides in the rural areas.

2. A study of student profiles at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), the primary agricultural school in the country, showed that more than half of the students came from urban areas and majority were from developing ones, as opposed to economically depressed parts of the country. Most of them had attended public primary schools and private secondary schools and had graduated in the top 25 percent of their class.

Majority of the students also came from small families and their parents were mostly college-degree holders and employed as professionals and businessmen.

Financial considerations and educational background of the families affect the opportunities of both men and women to study agricultural subjects. Much of the rural population lives in poverty and has fewer means and aspirations to take up agriculture as a career.

3. The major employer of UPLB graduates has traditionally been the government. In the past three decades, 48 percent of graduates were women and 35 percent were men, and they were employed in government service, particularly the Department of Agriculture.

4. Higher agricultural education attracts fewer students than other fields of study, probably due to perceptions of agriculture as a less prestigious and profitable profession. These attitudes are more prevalent in rural areas where farming has been the mainstay of the population, and where much of the population still lives in poverty.

This last finding of the FAO study on attitude toward agriculture is one of the barriers toward raising agriculture to the same level of significance as industries like manufacturing and mining, or even technology-based industries like telecommunications.

I also believe this negative attitude is a significant factor that has led to the deterioration of agricultural education in the country, except for the UPLB. Many of our agricultural schools, particularly the private institutions, were either shut down or were converted to nursing or computer schools.

Of course, we can’t really blame the owners of these schools. After all, education—at least for the private sector—is still a business, and any business must be able to adjust to shifting demands, such as the demand for nursing and computer courses.

This is why we have very few honest-to-goodness agricultural schools. But the current global food crisis now offers an opportunity for renewed interest in agricultural education, particularly in the rural areas, where knowledge and technology about modern farming can and should be applied readily.

Let us correct the attitude that agriculture is a poor man’s profession. Let us promote farming as a money-making venture—the high prices of agricultural commodities are an incentive to produce more from our farms. There are huge markets for our crops not only in our country but in many other countries, as well.

The government must take the lead in opening those markets for our farmers. It should conduct an inventory of the remaining agricultural schools, and provide them with the necessary support to hire the best agricultural educators and acquire modern teaching facilities and laboratories.

Agricultural education should also place heavy emphasis on research. We have enough professionals in research and development, thanks in large part to the UPLB. We should be able to regain our status as one of the most advanced countries in terms of agricultural research and development.

We always claim that we taught the Thais and the Vietnamese how to plant rice. It’s ironic that we now have to buy rice from them. And this is all because we have shifted our attention away from agriculture while they, with apparent foresight, developed and strengthened their food-production capabilities.

There’s nothing wrong about promoting information and communication technology or the business-process outsourcing industry. We have to keep up with the fast-changing times. But it should never be at the expense of agriculture, the importance of which is now being emphasized by the global food crisis.

We should be proud that we could produce our own food requirements, and even sell some, because we have ample arable land to produce food.

But we must get our act together. And one way to do that is to revive interest in agricultural education.

Indeed, it’s the road that will lead to food self-sufficiency for the nation, and the liberation of our people in the rural areas from poverty!

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