Take time to read and understand the concern of the petition, this call for attention towards the salary of our agricultural farmers here in the Philippines. The need of the Filipino farmers is increase to their salary and advancement for their work despite the hard work they put in their daily job. This concern should be noticed that Local farmers are being forced to “compete with more advanced or heavily subsidized agricultural production from abroad”, said Africa. The Filipino farmers are being left behind because of the lack of budget that is not enough to support necessities in their daily job they're not even able to keep up with the imports. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority farmers with poverty incidence of a 30% they remain the poorest include the fisherman in the country. 

Why do we need to increase farmers' salaries? 

The primary focus of this petition is to provide the Filipino farmers with the right amount of salary for their daily living expenses and reason for lack of salary increase. The daily minimum wage of a Filipino farmer according to Statisa (2024) is a minimum of about 573 philippine pesos. To think about the salary isn't enough for the daily expenses of a person especially when having a family to support, to add up that salary is for the workers in the capital region, it became lower in rural areas. The reason for the increase of income is because farmers face a lot of challenges and it costs them more. The farmers are in need of capital small-holder farmers don't have sufficient capital to afford high input costs such as fertilizers, pesticides, and other costs, this resort to a money lending that has high interest because of the barrier of accessing the formal credit. Post harvest facility, the lack of limited resources to store properly as they produce to avoid wastage, contamination,etc from pests and disease that they can sell at lower price handling this wrong will also lead to a decrease of quality. The constant change of climate change has a big impact on agricultural productivity especially the Philippine location is vulnerable to climate change that is extreme from the natural disasters. The complexity to access the market as it is concentrated to the highly large buyers with also the lack of information that transports to the farmers as in the demand struggling to find a reliable buyer. Lastly, the need for innovation in the Philippines agricultural development that should adapt innovative technology that will help the work of the farmers and efficient farming practice. All of these problems that filipino farmers face, the support for the increase of salary is still low and gains no attention.

Call for action

A study has been revealed that Filipino farmers do not wish their children to pursue farming, unless these young people are convince there is a brighter future in farming. Soon enough if the issue hasn't been heard there will a shortage of Filipino farmers due to the inequality of income. This calls for an attention of action that encouraging everyone's participation, agriculture is important in sustainability and poverty reduction. The Filipino farmers should be treated and be paid rightly and family through their hard work, as they have family to provide and necessities expenses. As a citizen of this country we could help our fellow filipino farmers by helping them hear their voices for their rights. Filipino farmers' jobs are also tough and should be recognized and granted the same amount of respect.