Undercounting the agri misery

The area where data gathering is sloppiest and bordering on the farcical is the agriculture sector. The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) data-gathering units get away with this statistical blunder because policymakers pay very little attention to agri-centric data, in effect absolving the two agencies of their grievous errors. The agriculture sector, the part about small-scale agriculture and small farmers in particular, is neck-deep in woes and beyond redemption, and if the government can just write it off, it would. There is zero incentive to get accurate agri-related data. During the budget deliberations prepandemic, the stock response of economic managers to appeals for more agricultural funds was this: The agriculture sector is a sunset sector for deadbeats; the service sector is ascendant.

Because of the extreme battering of the service sector under the pandemic regime, the agriculture sector is getting little attention now. But expect the attention to vanish once the pandemic is over and done with. Even the so-called “miraculous performance” of agriculture is a scam.  A study done by the Federation of Free Farmers unmasked the scam. What the government spent to produce an additional P1 worth of palay (unmilled rice) under the so-called intensified production program was P1.35. Bad agri economics, really.