Claim: 70 million Filipino farmers benefited from the BBM administration
Rating: FALSE
This statement, made by President Marcos during DZRH Radio’s Damdaming Bayan with Deo Macalma, says that some 70 million farmers have benefited under the current administration, considering that the president is also the agriculture secretary. President Marcos said that his government handed P1.74 Billion to these farmers (https://twitter.com/dzrhnews/status/1577827685593944065).
But this is highly unlikely, and is false.
According to the latest Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) census, conducted in 2020, the country has some 109 million population, with latest estimates in 2022 suggesting 112 million current population (https://psa.gov.ph/…/2020-census-population-and-housing…).
Of the population figures, some 33.4 million or 30.7 percent of the population are under 15 years of age and are young dependents, and 5 percent or 5.86 million are above 64 years of age and are old dependents (https://psa.gov.ph/population-and-housing/node/167965).
This leaves the remaining 69.4 million population as being of working age and eligible to be counted as part of the country’s workforce.
For the statement to be true, every single member of the working adult population in the country must be part of the agricultural sector.
Data from Worldbank’s International Labour Organization (ILO) as of 2021 indicates that the agricultural sector of the Philippines comprises only 23 percent of its population (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS), or roughly 25 million population.
The statement has an excess of some 45 million farmers, based on the claim. Even if the figures are one or two years behind as censuses are only conducted after a certain year interval, the statement is still too far from known numbers to be accurate.
Why we fact-checked this: Saying that our farmers benefitted from our government, which is only 100 days old, is already a dubious claim. But at least back it up with accurate statistics.
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