Agriculture is often seen by many young people as a poor man’s job, a dirty job, or a profession with little promise for the future. When students are encouraged to enroll in agriculture-related courses, many would immediately decline, not always because they do not value food production, but because they have already formed a negative image of farming before they even experience it.
In many rural communities, this perception is understandable. Young people see the struggles of farmers around them: the labor of preparing land, planting, managing pests, harvesting, and bringing produce to market, often for very little return. For children who grew up in farming households, agriculture is not always seen as an opportunity. Sometimes, it is seen as hardship.
I do not need to look far to see this. My father is sixty-four years old, and he still taps rubber on our farm in North Cotabato. Our farm has remained the same for many years, still relying on the old methods, and our rubber trees are aging and no longer as productive as before. Every harvest, he delivers cuplump to the buyer, and every time, I hear the same complaint about the low buying price. But he has no choice. He even does the tapping himself, at his age, because no tapper wants to work on a rubber farm when selling prices are very low.
Even farmer-parents themselves often tell their children to study well so they will not have to live the same difficult life. This advice is born not out of shame, but out of love and experience. Yet if the younger generation continues to move away from agriculture, one question remains: who will grow the food for the next generation?
The numbers tell us this fear is not imagined. The Philippine Statistics Authority reported that agricultural operators had a median age of 49.7 years based on the 2022 Census of Agriculture and Fisheries. The Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) has likewise raised concern that the average age of Filipino farmers is often reported within the 55 to 59 range. My father, at 64, is already past that. Employment in the sector has also been shrinking: PSA data cited by the Department of Agriculture show that by 2019, only about 9.7 million Filipinos were employed in agriculture, with the sector’s share of total employment down to 22.9 percent, and the average daily basic wage of agricultural workers then was only around 248 pesos.
I hear the same hesitation in our own campus. Every enrollment period, students who pass through our school would look for some other course to take, because for a long time, the only programs we offered were agriculture programs. I have heard students tease their classmates who enrolled in agriculture: “Ay, nag-agriculture ka lang? Sa uma ka na gani halin, mabalik ka naman sa uma. (You already came from the farm, and now you are going back to the farm.)” Behind the joke is a belief that farming means poverty, exhaustion, low status, and uncertainty, with none of the salary or career advancement that other professions promise.
This is the painful reality that must be acknowledged. Agriculture is noble, but nobility alone will not convince the youth to pursue it. Passion cannot stand alone if there are no opportunities, support systems, markets, technology, and dignity attached to the profession.
This is why agriculture must be presented differently: not merely as manual labor, but as science, business, technology, innovation, and public service. It is soil science, plant breeding, biotechnology, climate-smart farming, agribusiness, digital tools, and entrepreneurship. Many young people are simply not exposed to this modern face of farming. They may not see examples of young agripreneurs producing high-value vegetables, using drones and sensors, creating agri-content, or building businesses from local farm resources.
If agriculture is shown only as a burden, the youth will avoid it. If it is shown as an opportunity, they may begin to see its worth.
What many families do not know is that support already exists. The Department of Agriculture’s Young Farmers Challenge Program gives competitive start-up grants of up to 300,000 pesos, with training and market linkages, to Filipinos aged 18 to 30 with a promising agri-fishery business idea, through the DA Regional Field Offices. The Kapital Access for Young Agripreneurs, or KAYA, under the DA’s Agricultural Credit Policy Council, lends up to 500,000 pesos at zero interest and no collateral to young agripreneurs aged 18 to 30, accessed through partner rural banks and cooperatives. The Agricultural Training Institute also offers scholarships for children of smallholder farmers and fishers, a scholarship for 4-H Club members, a youth internship in organic agriculture, farm internships in Japan and Taiwan, and free online courses through its e-Extension platform. The opportunities exist; what is often missing is the bridge between these programs and the young people, especially in far-flung barangays, who need them.
So what can we do? Students can visit their Municipal Agriculture Office or the nearest DA office and ask about these programs by name, or start small with a vegetable plot or a seedling nursery as both income and classroom. Parents can involve their children in the business side of the farm, letting them track costs and earnings, so they see it as an enterprise that can be improved, not just endured. Teachers can make agriculture experiential, connecting students with real farms and young agripreneurs, and help them apply for scholarships and grants. Local governments can make information about these programs visible to ordinary families, help young farmers access idle land, link them to markets, and publicly honor outstanding young farmers so the community sees that farming can be a source of pride.
As an agriculture faculty member and as a daughter of a farmer, this concern is personal to me. I have seen the sacrifices behind farming, and I have seen students move away from it because they think it has nothing better to offer. This reflection is a call to rethink how we present agriculture to the next generation. We must stop treating it as a fallback choice and start presenting it as a profession of purpose, science, innovation, enterprise, and dignity, backed by the programs and support that make such a future reachable.
Agriculture may be underrated, but it is never unimportant. Every profession depends on food. Every community depends on farmers. Every future depends on the land and on the people willing to cultivate it. It must be carried forward by young hands, fresh minds, and a renewed belief that farming is not a life of limitation, but a profession with the power to feed, heal, and sustain the world.