Limited public investment in agriculture Sample Clauses

Limited public investment in agriculture. Lack of irrigation If one asks a farmer in the Philippines why he or she agreed to a land investment arrangement, be it a lease rental of contract growership agreement, the answer will almost invariably be because he or she does not have the resources to make the lands productive, and as such have very little option but to enter into these arrangements. Indeed, limited public investment in agriculture – manifested mainly in government’s failure to deliver essential agricultural support services such as irrigation, credit, farm to market roads as well as farm trainings and technology extension – is, perhaps, one of the most important supply drivers of agricultural lands for investments. To wit, irrigation, which has the potential to increase agricultural output by at least 20 per cent remains highly inaccessible to many small men and women farmers. In 2006, only 1.4 million hectares of the country’s 3.1 million hectares of agricultural lands have irrigation facilities. This means that only 45 % or less than half of the country’s agricultural land resource have yet to maximize its full production potential. Unfortunately, many of the existing irrigation facilities are no longer fully functional or operating at optimum capacity, having fallen into a state of disrepair over the last few decades. Bulk of the country’s irrigation facilities were established during the 1970s to the mid 1980 under the Marcos administration. The rehabilitation of irrigation facilities, more than the irrigation of new areas has been the focus of the National Irrigation Agency (NIA). Accordingly, there has been very little progress in the expansion of irrigated agricultural lands, from 1,338,815 million hectares in 1999 to 1,427,924 million hectares in 2006. For the past ten years, government has only been able to irrigate an average of 11,137 hectares per year. At this rate, it will take government at least 157 years to fully irrigate all agricultural lands! The biggest balance, in terms of absolute area of lands for irrigation, are in Cagayan Valley and Central Luzon, mainly because these regions have the highest total land area in the Philippines. However, the lowest area of irrigated lands as a percentage to total irrigable lands are in Mindanao, specifically in SOCCSKSARGEN (28%), ARMM (14%) and CARAGA (29%). Table 1 Irrigated Lands in the Philippines, 2006 Region Estimated Potentially Irrigable Areas (hectares) Total Irrigated Areas (hectares) Balance (hecatares) Percentage of ...