To the small entrepreneurs, agriculture has always been a symbol of backwardness and unprofitable business. There are, however, clear signs of rural dwellers getting richer, thanks to improved infrastructures that are enabling them to benefit from what is known as agribusiness. It is in agribusiness that there is no conflict between agriculture and industry. In agribusiness the two are symbiotic and reinforce the strengths of one another. Agribusiness comprises farming, post-harvest technology, food processing or manufacturing, wholesaling, and retailing. Although it is not limited to food products, since it may also involve the production of agricultural commodities for biofuels, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals, agribusiness is mainly involved in bringing food from the farm to the plate. It can also encompass a large share of industry, which includes construction, public utility, and manufacturing.

In the past, because of the utter neglect of rural infrastructures, the products from Filipino farmers were extremely high-cost because of both low productivity at the farm level and prohibitive transport and distribution costs. That is why, it was very difficult to industrialize the food industry because of the high cost of raw materials. In fact, most of the large food manufacturing enterprises had to import their raw materials. However, with improved rural infrastructures, there is now a proliferation of businesses processing food products for both the local and export markets. The country has gone beyond just exporting coconut oil and raw sugar. There are both large and small enterprises that make money selling food products manufactured from the raw materials that the Filipino farmers grow. An outstanding example can be found in the province of Bulacan where the Tatak Bulacan brand can be found in beautifully packaged polvorones, pastillas de leche, peanut brittle, buko pie and numerous Filipino delicacies that can now be found in supermarkets both here and abroad.

Thanks to the technical help from the Department of Science and Technology, these traditional food items are now better packaged so that it will be a matter of time before the Philippines can compete with similar products from Thailand, whose entrepreneurs have had a headstart because of the much earlier support that they got from their government that gave the highest priority to agricultural development in the last century.

Thanks to their proximity to the very lucrative market of more than 10 million consumers in the Metro Manila region, many farmers in Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, and Quezon are able to significantly improve their meager incomes from such traditional crops as rice, coconut and sugar by growing high-value crops that can produce net earnings of R500,000 to R1,000,000 per hectare of land. In addition to reasonably good roads, irrigation and post-harvest facilities in these provinces, the farmers are ably assisted by private seed companies like East West Seed and Harbest with the best technology from Europe and Taiwan. During the early phase of the rise of Taiwan from poverty to richness, the Taiwanese assigned the highest priority to endowing their small farmers with the rural infrastructures they needed to make money on their respective farms. Now that Taiwan is phasing out a lot of its agriculture because of the scarcity of both land and labor, Harbest is bringing to the Philippines the Taiwanese technology of growing such profitable crops as sweet papaya, ampalaya, eggplant, lettuce, etc. In Cavite, there is the traditional small and very sweet pineapple that small farmers are growing. In both Batangas and Cavite, companies like Nestle are helping small farmer return to the coffee growing that these provinces were very famous for before the Second World War.

In the coming years, we shall see an intensification of investment in agribusiness of what we call farmer-entrepreneurs. We should make sure our educational system is geared towards this encouraging trend. For comments, my e-mail address is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph.