Agriculture Undersecretary Bernie Fondevilla is urging young Filipinos to pursue agricultural careers to replace aging practitioners and arrest the slide in food output and raise rural incomes.

Fondevilla said that like other "white-collar" jobs, work in agriculture can be profitable, with countless opportunities just waiting to be tapped.

He stressed that the farm and fisheries sectors can be more than viable for enterprising citizens, perhaps as good paying as law and engineering or even medicine.

Fondevilla said replacing aging farm practitioners is the utmost concern of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and attracting more investments in agriculture is one way of encouraging more people to work in the sector.

He noted that the average age in the farming sector is higher than 60. "The problem of an aging farmer sector population is not just in the Philippines. This is also a problem of countries like Japan, the US and many of our neighboring countries," he noted.

"Sa mga kabataan po natin, gusto ninyong magkaroon ng napakagandang posibilidad sa kinabukasan ninyo? (To our youth, you want to have bright possibilities for your future?) Consider agriculture," Fondevilla said during the recent National Awareness Month Celebration.

"The future is bright, the future is actually agriculture," he stressed.

In spite of the growing population and climate change on agriculture, this sector offers young Filipinos various opportunities for career growth because food will always be in high demand.

The global demand for rice, for instance, is growing steadily at 1.5 percent annually, according to data from the International Rice Research Institute, Fondevilla noted.

The problem of a growing population, on the other hand, can be transformed into an opportunity, Fondevilla argued, considering that this means more mouths to feed, and hence, more consumers of rice and other food staples.

As for climate change, he said the DA under Secretary Yap has begun implementing a series of measures to mitigate its effects on Philippine agriculture and help its small stakeholders adapt to altered weather patterns.

"In all of these, the DA will be there for you,” Fondevilla said.

"The DA will continue to partner with other agencies, with the private sector, to make sure that in the future our country will not only be self-sufficient in terms of food, but will be a big contributor as well to the food supply not just of the region but of the world."

Earlier, Yap pointed out that agriculture is becoming a lucrative venture, given that the Philippines is now emerging as the preferred biofuels production hub in Asia, what with a mandated 600-million liter E10 requirement of ethanol by 2015, and a commensurate volume for bio-diesel.

Yap had said another area awaiting capital infusion is the marine culture parks industry. The Philippines has the second longest coastline in the world with hundreds of protected coves.

Another way to earn more in agriculture is to learn "value-adding," which means increasing the economic value and consumer appeal of farm produce, such as processing mango into purees or dried fruits or converting malunggay into tea.