Last week, The Manila Times sponsored an online forum titled “Food Security through Agribusiness and Digitalization” that was moderated by Conrad Carino, the paper’s agribusiness editor, and myself as columnist. The panel of experts was composed of Agriculture Secretary William Dar; Roberto Amores, chairman of the Agriculture Committee of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Cherrie Atilano, United Nations Ambassador for Nutrition and head of Agrea; Jairus Ferrer, founder and president of i-Farms, Inc.; and Dennis Tactac, president of the Philippine Society of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineers.

After the welcome and opening remarks of The Times Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Dante “Klink” Ang 2nd, Amores noted that there is much work to be done to raise the productivity of the Philippine agriculture sector and make it at par with that of its neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. He revealed that the agricultural exports of countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam are worth more than $15 to $30 billion per year while the Philippines lags far behind at $6 billion. Moreover, our agricultural imports outstrip the value of our agricultural exports while neighboring countries have a net agricultural trade surplus. He stressed that the application of modern farm technology through agribusiness operations and digital agriculture will partly address the problem of low productivity of our agri-fishery sector.