Background and Purpose
○The Philippines is geographically near to Korea among ASEAN members. Although the agricultural sector takes 9.7% of the gross domestic product as of 2018, rural areas are home to 53% of the population, and take 25.1% of the sector’s entire employment.

○Korea has offered the nation substantial ODA supports. The “New Southern Policy,” declared in 2017, has accelerated the bilateral relations. Against this backdrop, it is crucial to establish a cooperation framework and select vital areas for successful assistance to the Philippines for agricultural and rural development.

○This research intends to analyze the Philippines’ agriculture and rural areas and review its development strategies to make policy suggestions to the Korean government for its collaboration with the Philippines.

Research Methodology
○For the research, we explored international and local literature, statistics, and databases. Amid the COVID-19 situation, undertaking field surveys was impossible. Instead, we gained advice and information from the experts of the Philippine Science Foundation for Rice Research and Industry. We interviewed 28 international and local professionals to identify each phase’s significance in the Philippines’ agricultural value chains. We also used the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to analyze the data we collected.

Key Findings
○The Philippines produces rice, sugarcane, coconut, banana, maize, and pineapple. It had 19 million tons of rice on 4.8 million hectares in 2018. Although it is the 8th largest rice producer, it is the biggest rice importer simultaneously. Its entire farmland was 5.59 million hectares in 2016. The rural population was 56.62 million. And 10 million people worked for the agricultural sector in 2018.

(For more information, please refer to the report.)