Making farming, agri ‘sexier’

TO MAKE farming and agriculture sexier to the youth, money could be the “sexiest attraction” of all, according to the Department of Education (DepEd).

Education Secretary Leonor Briones said she was mulling over a policy declaration that would urge companies involved in immersion programs for farming and agriculture students to give them allowances or some form of honorarium.

In a hearing of the Senate committee on education, arts and culture on Monday, senators and education officials agreed that there was a need to make agriculture courses more appealing to students following the low turnout of enrollees in the agriculture strand of the Senior High School (SHS) program.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, vice chair of the committee, asked education officials how many of those in the technical-vocational-livelihood strand were in agriculture.

“It’s very low [because] it’s not sexy to young people,” answered Education Undersecretary Dina Ocampo.

Gatchalian said agriculture courses being not appealing to young people posed a big problem in the future since 60 percent of the country’s current workforce was in agriculture.

“Our country generates about 40 percent of its GDP from agriculture. If we don’t have a future workforce going into agriculture that will be a big problem in the immediate term. So maybe we can also be enlightened as to how to make it sexier for students to join the agriculture strand,” he said.

Contrary to these statistics, however, the Department of Agriculture in March reported the agriculture sector employed over 30 percent of the Philippine workforce but contributed less than 15 percent to GDP.

Agreeing that agriculture courses needed some spicing up, Briones said that if the government wanted to attract more young Filipinos to take up agriculture “we have to make it financially viable for them.”

“If we are thinking of how to make agriculture sexy, economics and finance is the sexiest attraction of all,” she told the committee chaired by Sen. Bam Aquino.

“If we are thinking of how to make agriculture sexy, economics and finance is the sexiest attraction of all,” she told the committee chaired by Sen. Bam Aquino.

Data presented by DepEd showed that out of the 1.517 million students enrolled in the SHS program, 60.27 percent or over 914,000 students signed up for its academic track while enrollment in the technical-vocational-livelihood track was at 39.15 percent.