Population: a Factor in Sustainable

One of the factors in agriculture is the people of the state. Food is so necessity that
without food, the people will be unproductive, will be prone to sickness, or worse, death. To
meet the satisfaction of the population, the supply of food must meet the demand of every
individual. And to sustain the nutritional needs, the population needs to have enough amount of
food every single day.
In the Philippines, rice is a really important food. But, even though there was an increase
in the production of rice, there is still shortage of rice because of the rising demand of rice
caused by rapid overpopulation. According to Dr. Santiago R. Obien, he stated that “As of now,
we have done better. We already produced 19.28 million metric tons of rice. Don’t ever forget
that the production has been going up. In 2010, the population was 92 million. If we only have
92 million today, we only have enough food”. In his statement, he explained how self-sufficient
the Philippines when it comes to rice if our population growth didn’t rise drastically. As of 2018,
our population will be 106 million. In the Law of Supply and Demand, when the demand is very
high, the supply goes down. When he said that if we only have few demand for rice, the supply
of it will be surely distributed to the people evenly. But since the Philippine population is 106
million, there’s a “shortage” of rice, and the Philippines need to import more from other
countries.
The government is doing its best to make the Philippines a rice self-sufficient country,
but the pacing become slower because of the escalating demand caused by rapid population
growth.

Sociology: How Social Behavior affects Green Revolution?

There was a rise of inter-personal inequalities in India. According to (Mehta, n.d.), only
the rich farmers have only access in modern technologies in agriculture while the poor farmers are
still stick to the traditional way of farming. For a successful Green Revolution, new technologies,
usage of high-graded seed, fertilizers, and higher capital are required. But, the rich farmers are
feasible enough to have it all. Thus, it amplified the gap between the rich and the poor. The gender
inequality also became an issue in Indian agriculture. As stated by (Pingali, 2012), cross-country
empirical evidence shows that female farmers are just efficient as male farmers when using the
same productive assets. Yet, women still face hurdles in using productive resources and
technologies needed for Green Revolution.

In the Philippines’ case, there were a misused in the allocation of monetary funds in
agriculture. In the Masagana 99 project of the Marcos Administration, Filipino farmers can loan
to rural banks so that they have the money to buy the necessary materials and apparatuses for the
production of rice. But, the project failed because of two failures: buying unnecessary items for
agriculture and the mindset that the government just doing the project for the sake of preserving
public image. According to Emmanuel Esguerra, the rural banks were not considered as a banks
anymore during that time because their function downgraded from being a bank to money lender
to the farmers. Thus, their indicators of successful performance was based on how much money
they lend to the farmers. In addition, the command of the money came from the government
itself. As a result, the farmers just keep borrowing money from the banks because of having this
mindset “It is just the money of the government. So, why should I pay?” Therefore, farmers will
tend to use that borrowed money for unnecessary things for rice production. The second failure is
somehow connected to the first one. Esguerra said that the cause of the downfall of the program
is the way it was designed. If the farmers believed that the Masagana 99 is just for “preserving a
politician’s image”, their obvious response will be negative because they are unsure about the
future progress of the project. Both the attitudes of the farmers and the government affect the
progress of production of rice in the Philippines.

However, in Japan, a massive incident did not made the Japanese farmers to give up. In
March 12, 2011, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake occurred at the northeast of Japan followed by a 30-
feet high tsunami. According to (CNN, 2018), the incident was the largest earthquake ever hit
Japan. Few hours later, a seismic intensity scale of 7 struck Sakae-mura, a farming village
located in Nagano-shi, Japan. The disaster caused hectares of land to be unusable for planting
and the current crops that are already planted were destroyed. According to (Yoshioka &
Yomiuri, 2011), around 170 hectares of lands were cracked or around 75 percent of the used land
were subside. The irrigation systems were also perished because of the landslides caused by the
earthquake. Despite of the disastrous losses, the Japanese farmers haven’t gave up their hope.
They removed all the weeds in the lands and they also repaired their irrigation systems. They
also repair their shine and they started to pray for their recovery and for good harvest. According
to an interview of (Yoshioka & Yomiuri, 2011) to Toshiro Hirose, the head of a farmer
association in Mori District of Sakae-mura, he said that aside from their own free will to fix the
farmlands, the Japanese Central Government is also helping by subsidizing a plan for restoring
the village from the disaster. Despite of negative event that happened, Japanese people still got
their selves up to restore their agricultural sector by having perseverance.

The progress of Green Revolution in every country differs on how their farmers think and
act.

References
CNN. (2018, March 16). 2011 Japan Earthquake - Tsunami Fast Facts. Retrieved from CNN:
https://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/17/world/asia/japan-earthquake---tsunami-fast-
facts/index.html

Mehta, P. (n.d.). Main Defects Found in Green Revolution. Retrieved from Economic Discussion:
http://www.economicsdiscussion.net/articles/main-defects-found-in-green-revolution/2275
Pingali, P. L. (2012, July 31). Green Revolution: Impacts, limits, and the path ahead. Retrieved from
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States:
https://www.pnas.org/content/109/31/12302

Yoshioka, T., & Yomiuri, S. (2011, April 8). After Japan's earthquake and tsunami - week 5. Retrieved
from http://factsanddetails.com/japan/cat24/sub159/item939.html