Timberland stewardship

RA 8435 talks about agriculture and land stewardship. On paper it looks like they have great programs to help the Filipino farmer.
Executive order 858 is the negative list of businesses for foreign investment and percentages allowed. There is no mention of whether a business is incorporated or not, just if a foreigner is allowed to own a particular business and if so, what percentage. Annex "A" section 2 Practice of all professions (This is limited to Filipino citizens save in cases prescribed by law) line U) Agriculture
A foreigner is excluded from owning any retail business, (no foreign equity allowed) as well as many others. What am I missing here?
Scott

 

I understand your viewpoint. Thanks for explaining it. As far as crop rotation goes, growing only one crop is hard on the soil, but it is often practised in the Philippines, and even in the U.S. The way they make it work is by intensive inputs to the soil (fertilizers). The Philippines has the world record for one plot of land being under continuous cultivation for rice. Something like 100 years straight, with no drop in yield, so it can be done. Topsoil erosion is more of a threat, than mono-cropping, in my opinion.

Sugarcane is an amazing and very tough plant, it is also the most efficient plant in the world at converting sunlight to natural sugar. When it gets enough water and nutrients you can almost watch it grow. It grows that fast! After it is harvested, it regrows, and is normally allowed to do so for up to 5 harvests before it is plowed under or dug up prior to the next planting, so to a point, once planted the farmer is stuck with it for a while.

In the U.S. where crops are easily traced, yes this is a possibility, especially with lawsuit happy consumers, but when was the last time you heard about something like that happening in the Philippines? Some crops are more prone to bacterial contamination than others, lettuce is one, which isn't grown much in the Philippines.

 

Sugarcane has been an excellent cash crop in the past, but the world-wide demand for sugar has dropped over the last year or so. 2-3 years ago it peaked and all the sugarcane growers couldn't believe what they got. It still is a good money maker, and if conditions are perfect, it can be harvested twice a year, but usually it is only harvested once a year on most farms in the Philippines. Sugar normally nets more $$ than rice per hectare, and it stomps coconuts, at least as of now when you can't get hardly any money for copra. It also does fairly well for being mostly a non-irrigated crop, and hangs in there for a long time even with periods of little or no rain.

The price paid by the sugar mills here can very weekly, but one can always call their local mill and get an accurate price of what they are paying per ton.

You can pretty much grow whatever you want, but weather and market conditions will dictate what a smart farmer grows. A lot of farms are limited to what they can get to market because of poor, or only seasonal roads too. The Philippines really does need to work on improving its infrastructure as far as roads and access to electricity.

I think any farmer would be wise to grow more than one type of crop, as prices vary from year to year on almost everything.