Agriculture Definition and Details

AGRICULTURE

             First, let me define what agriculture is. According to our lecture in the course Agri 11, “Agriculture refers to the art, science and business of cultivating the soil, planting of crops, growing of fruit trees, management of forests, raising or catching or both of livestocks, poultry or fish, including harvesting and postharvest handling.” It is an art because it requires skill and experience. It is a science because it follows some methodology and it has laws obtained by the identifying problems and addressing solutions to it by the scientific method and it is a business because profit can be earned by practicing agriculture and can open an enterprise.

Born from Rizal, a nearby province where mountains, lofty trees and fields are prominent, my environment way back is closely the same as here in Los Banos, Laguna. Our family compound where I lived in during my childhood is somehow located between the mountains, we’re in a valley. Aside from mountains, wide green fields surround us. These wide green fields were taken care of by the parents of my childhood friends who live outside our compound and whose houses are built just beside the fields. Along with them are their carabaos. I knew then that they were farmers.  I see them wide awake and working every morning I go to school and during the afternoon when the sun is about to set. There was also a large plantation in our compound managed by my grandfather, as far as I could remember it was an eggplant plantation. My grandfather himself waters them and takes care of the crops himself and he also hires some helpers. There were also families living at the boundaries of our compound that raise pigs and chickens. I remember myself not getting near their homes because I don’t like the smell, yes, I was a bit rude when I was a kid. My family also has friends living on the mountains near the sea surrounding our town. Majority of the population are fishermen. Fishing is their main source of income; they sell their fish themselves in the market. I was able to know this because they sometimes drop by our house and give us fish for free.

These are the things that surrounded me when I was a child. I know that they exist but I never thought that these things make up the term agriculture. I never thought that these things value so much to some person and eventually would value to me as well.

Like what I’ve said, since then, agriculture seemed to be part of my life. During those times, I honestly thought that these things that make up agriculture are for those people who are less fortunate and for those who weren’t able to finish studying. I cannot be blamed for this perception. Some circumstances and the situation itself gave me this kind of idea. The people, our neighbors, who do these things, are those who are less fortunate, those who have lots of children and those who weren’t able to finish school. I had lived with this perception for many years.

My perception about agriculture only changed when I entered college, specifically the University of the Philippines Los Banos. When I was filling out my UPCAT form, while browsing on the courses, I noticed that there were agricultural courses in this campus. I was puzzled and stopped and thought for a while. I asked myself, “Ano kayang pinag-aaralan nila?” I also encountered some friends making fun of the courses. They said that they’ll take up those kinds of courses for them to be able to enter the university and after a semester they’ll shift to another course. They thought that they’ll have a higher possibility of passing the exam if they choose a course that seemed to be easy for them. They, or should I say, we thought that agricultural courses were easy.

As I’ve got accepted in the university, I lived in a room with three other freshmen and one of them, Rose Diane Locaba is taking up Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. It didn’t surprise me because she was from Bicol and her family owns a rice field. What surprised me were her subjects. She had a lot of subjects that I think were harder than mine. And as the days went by, Diane is the busiest of us three.  She always had a lot of researching and memorizing. She memorizes a lot of terms every night. She stays late at night to review for her examinations She had two laboratory subjects. And until now, second semester, she’s still the busiest of us. And now she even has three laboratories. That was then I realized that agriculture is never easy just like what I’ve thought. Agriculture is more than the animals, plants and the fields. Agriculture is also a serious thing. A lot of studying must be done to fully understand agriculture and to be an expert at it. From then on, I admired those students who are taking up agriculture for studying that course requires a lot of patience and perseverance and especially knowledge.

I had a higher appreciation on agriculture when I had a subject about agriculture, which is I am currently taking up now. In our classes, the importance of agriculture was discussed. The history of agriculture was also discussed. I was amazed on how the agriculture flourished through time and how agriculture helped the people from the past up to the present. I was also amazed of the inventions made to improve the performance of agriculture and also of the different variations discovered in the course of studying other species. I was also amazed on how our country is producing a lot of agricultural products. It made me realize how thankful we should be that our country is an agricultural one. Food is just in our hands, all we have to do is to make it flourish. I was also able to learn about the effect of the production and consumption of agricultural products on us, Filipinos.

Due to these circumstances my perception towards agriculture changed. I came to realize that agriculture is more than just what I thought it was. First I realized that agriculture is not and should not be limited to those people who are less fortunate. A lot of people spend their whole lives and fortune on studying agriculture and to improve it. Great knowledge is needed to execute practices on agriculture well and right. And I prove myself wrong that jobs relating to agriculture are for the less fortunate ones. It’s just that these people engage in agriculture because these are the resources they have but not because they know nothing. In fact, dealing with agriculture is not that easy it requires skill and experience. It’s just like building infrastructures, treating ill people, teaching students and the like. Its value is parallel to others also. It is neither less important nor should be given less attention. No discrimination should be given to agriculture and to the ones engage in it.