Online Farming

In November 2009, there are 66,505,622 monthly active users worldwide engaged in Farmville as a real-time farm simulation game, a social networking on Facebook since it was launched in June 2009. It was developed by Zynga, a video game developer located in San Francisco, California, USA. This was founded in June 2007 by Mark Pincus, Michael Luxton, Eric Schiermeyer, Justin Waldron, Andrew Trader, and Steve Schoettler. The game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops, trees, and livestock. May we pause these questions: What do you think is the status of the agricultural lands in the Philippines particularly in Bicol region? How many are Bicolanos engaged in agricultural activities?

Looking at the Philippine Agricultural feature, the Philippines has a total area of 300,000 sq. km. In August 2007, population reached 88.57 million with an annual growth rate of 2.04%. Over 60% of the population live in coastal areas, with Luzon (the largest island group), accounting for more than half of the entire population. It is one of 18 megabiodiversity countries containing 2/3 of the earth’s biodiversity and about 70-80% of the world’s plant and animal species.

The region of South Tagalog has the highest number of farms with 561,538 farms. It is followed by Central and Western Visayas as second and third places with 435,826 and 428,397 farms, respectively. Southern Mindanao ranks a close fourth with 424,275 farms. Bicol has 394,897; Northern Mindanao 389,493; Central Luzon 351,365; Eastern; Visayas 330,374; Ilocos 324,812; Cagayan 297,979; Western Mindanao 260,054; Central Mindanao 233,657; Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao 214,356; Cordillera Administrative Region 110,481; and National Capital Area 12,667.

More than one-third of the farms in the country are fully owned and another 10% are partly owned. Fifteen percent are tenanted, 6% are farmed rent free, and 3% are leased. Almost one-third of the farms are held under more than one type of tenurial status; that is, they are partially owned and partially rented, leased, or farmed under other forms of tenancy. The majority of farmland (95%) is planted in crops, 53% is in temporary crops, and 42% is in permanent crops. Only 5% of the farmland in the Philippines is utilized in other ways: 1% is in permanent meadows and pastures; and, less than 1% each is in home lot, temporary meadows and pastures, woodland and forest, temporarily fallow, and other uses.

NSO, 1991 Census of Agriculture and Fisheries and 2002 Census of Agriculture documented that the number of farms in Bicol Region slightly increased by 1.9%, from 377.8 thousand in 1991 to 384.8 thousand in 2002. These farms covered an area of 892.0 thousand hectares, almost half (48.4%) of the region’s total land area. However, the total area of farms in the region decreased by 4.7% during the period mentioned. This is attributed to the decrease in the area of farms in almost all provinces in the region, especially Camarines Norte and Camarines Sur with 13.2% and 7.8% reduction, respectively. Likewise, the average farm size decreased from 2.5 hectares in 1991 to 2.3 hectares in 2002. Masbate ranked second in terms of farm area in Bicol Region with 207.5 thousand hectares in 59.4 thousand farms. About 23.3% of the total farm area in the region was accounted for by this province. This resulted in an average farm size of 3.5 hectares, the largest among provinces in the region. Although Camarines Sur accounted for the highest number of farms (134.1 thousand) and the largest farm area in the region (263.0 thousand hectares), its average farm size was only 2.0 hectares.

In 2002, a total of 487.8 thousand household members (42.4 percent) were engaged in agricultural activities. About 417.6 thousand (85.6%) household members were engaged in own holding, 47.6 thousand (9.7%) both in their own holding and in the holding of others, and 22.7 thousand (4.6%) in other holdings. On the other hand, a total of 288.0 thousand females were engaged in agricultural activity, outnumbering the males by 89.6 thousand.

In 2007, The International Monetary Fund considered the Philippines as the 37th largest economy which has mixed economic system and one of the newly industrialized emerging market economies of the world. It is one of the fastest growing economies in Asia with GDP growth rate of 7.3% in 2007; however, its growth slowed to 4.5% in 2008 as a result of the global financial crisis.

As a result, if Facebook has more than 66.5 active users engaged in Farmville; the Philippines has a total farms of 4,770,171 with an estimated of 96.06 million population as of July 2008. The record shows that a total of 980.3 Bicolano households members are engaged in agricultural activities. Some Bicolano Farmville users suggested that if everyone can avail the opportunity to engage in agricultural activities like the online farming on Facebook, for sure the Philippines will make it to outrank the other largest industrialized market economy of the world. However, the big question is, can the landowners share their property for all? If yes, would the Filipinos have the interest in farming? We don’t think so.