Dealing with agricultural challenges, Pinoy style

The agriculture industry often swings wildly between highly profitable and/or satisfying and extremely frustrating, with rarely any buffer in between.

- AVANT GARDENER YVETTE TAN

Much of this is systemic; much, if not all, of the world's food system is broken and the Philippines' is no exception, especially when compared to some of its neighbors. This not only includes market forces and inadequate government intervention, but unsustainable practices that often result in food waste, discouragement and disillusionment among agriculture workers (usually due to a low profit margin and widespread discrimination against their industry), and the like.

There are also factors that cannot be controlled, like climate change; difficult to eradicate, like pests and diseases; and perhaps most annoyingly, because they are in theory the easiest to change but in practice, actually the hardest: human behavior.

Much (if not all) of this stems from ignorance among the general populace (My favorite and most horrific example is the time someone on the internet angrily and haughtily told me that farmers don't deserve to get paid livable wages because "tilling the fields is enough reward," as if farming was easy and all farmers lived inside a bubble of complete and utter joy). Some have to do with culture, others through lack of education and curiosity about the world beyond the confines of one's tiny life.