ECONOMIC

DEVELOPMENT
(Rural and Urban Development; Rural Poor)

Tesorero, Nicamille Juliesse A.

AC103

Mrs. Marilyn Villalon Maniago

 RURAL POOR

Agriculture is that the main source of income for rural inhabitants, primarily in
farming and fishing. Most farmers and tiny landholders board areas that are liable to
natural disasters or conflicts. Declines in agricultural productivity, unsuccessful small
landholder farming operations and unsustainable practices have caused deforestation
and weakened fish stocks.

Tenants or sharecroppers are farmers without a land of their own. They are very
poor because their level of income is very low. And yet their basic needs are many and
their small earnings are not enough even to pay their most basic human needs. The
struggle of those people that lacks a proper living and high-generating income job is
very high and thinking that their percentage of surviving in a day depends on the income
of the person striving to earn.

The institution of land reform by Third World governments has not significantly
changed the economic conditions of the rural poor. Implementation of such programs
has not really been sincere and vigorous. It is still the middlemen who get the profits
and also the multinational corporations which sell expensive fertilizers, chemicals and
farm implements to the small farmers. Therefore, the programs created for the poor
have not been very effective for them because the effect can only be reflective for those
companies and middlemen that are gaining income from those farmers.

HELPING THE RURAL POOR

The Philippines has been working toward poverty reduction for decades. It has
even included targets on human development and poverty reduction in its medium-term
development plans. With poverty reduction as main goal of the government, the
demand for poverty statistics has become more important. Several poverty monitoring
systems are being conducted both at the national and community level providing
income and non-income based measures of poverty. These became the premise for
social and economic development plans and programs of national and native
governments.

The task of helping the rural poor, while difficult, is achievable. Dr. Umali stated
in his closing remarks the success stories of Japan, Korea and Taiwan in the field of
rural development. In the means of improving the structure of their institutions,
fashioning appropriate development strategies and better use of available resources,
such countries were able to transform their rural areas from poverty to prosperity.

However, the primary responsibility of fighting rural poverty rests on the

government. Poor people are interested to change their economic conditions if they are
properly assisted by the government.

Development is people development. Government rural development programs

cannot succeed if the people are not developed first. Therefore, all developmental
programs should be focused on people. After all, these are for their individual interests.
Human as they are, their development can only grow in an atmosphere of freedom and
opportunity. Without these, poor people only exist as slaves of the privileged few.