Former Vice President and senatorial candidate Jejomar Binay on Friday said farmers should be provided with more irrigation facilities and water sources to increase agricultural productivity and keep food prices stable.
Binay issued the statement from the Province of Quezon, where he is on the third leg of his campaign sortie in Southern Tagalog.
Of the country’s 3.1 million hectares of irrigable land, Binay said the National Irrigation Authority’s (NIA) total developed service area stood at around two million hectares in 2020.
He said that these could be further improved through the construction of small-scale irrigation facilities.
“Aside from depending on large-scale structures like dams, the government can build more small-scale irrigation facilities including Small Water Impounding Project (SWIP), small diversion dams (SWD), small farm reservoirs (SFR), and shallow tube wells,” Binay added.
The SWIP, SWD, and SFR collect rain or stream water in a containment structure or reservoir. Shallow tube wells, meanwhile, draw water from aquifers for irrigation use.
The former vice president said these structures can also be used for aquaculture, as well as flood prevention and control.
“Instead of rainwater merely wasting away and causing floods, we can store them for future productive use, especially during dry months,” Binay said.
“In the long-term, the government can entice more Filipinos to go to the agricultural sector by improving irrigation facilities, providing farming inputs, as well as developing a critical mass of agricultural professionals in the country and investing in research and development,” he added.
In 2020, the country’s agriculture sector contributed 10.2 percent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), a slight increase from the 9.2 percent registered in 2019. The sector has steadily declined from 2015 to 2019, Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data showed.
