WITH vast farmlands now underwater following the continuing rain, there is greater need for farmers to be introduced and become familiar with the science of agriculture and the latest developments rather than proceed as barely literate work hands doing the stuff handed down from generation to generation.
Now, more than ever, the Department of Agriculture's (DA) university-on-the-air and extension workers should be harnessed to their utmost capabilities.
We have been seeing how farmers had to suffer the brunt of "crop failure" from flooding, every year by the year. Throw in around six months of drought where they go hungry. Government never really cared, and government workers have made these disasters as opportunities to line their pockets with money, at the expense of the poor, starving farmers.
Thus, every administration, some sort of fertilizer scam is uncovered. Otherwise, special programs to bring relief to farmers are not delivered.
In many instances, these programs are delivered at the expense of the farmers, thus tying them further to debts over and above the debts they already owe to the middlemen and grain millers.
There's hope in this administration. President Rodrigo Duterte has repeatedly stressed that he wants inclusive growth, and he has shown clear bias for the poor and needy. Then we have Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol who is among the hardest working among the Cabinet members.
Climate is fast changing, weather has become more difficult to predict, and the most vulnerable sectors are suffering. government has to come in and come in fast, with honest to goodness dedication to become teachers for the farmers and make this poor but vital sector abreast with how to deal with all these changes.
By this time, DA should realize that there is more to extension work than just finishing an agricultural course. The task goes beyond just what you have finished in tertiary education. When you are dealing with a sector that can barely finish high school, the focus should be in communicating well and passing on the technology to the most comprehensible level.
That is the challenge to the DA these days, and it is a challenge that can only be done by people who see farmers as the key to sustainable development and not as opportunities to line up their pockets for yet another bonanza of cash, a practice that has long been tolerated and perpetuated in the past.