Part I of the two-part article on agricultural mechanization in the Philippines provides the brief historical background of its development. The past colonial governments of Spain (1521 to 1898), which had focused on plantation crop production for supply of raw materials to the mother country and made the local inhabitants "hewers of wood and drawers of water," and the US (1901 to 1946), which focused mostly on basic and soft profession education (teaching, law and medicine) and little in hard profession and technology education (agriculture, engineering and industry) had not transferred agricultural mechanization technologies early on and more importantly, had not established a culture base of entrepreneurship and manufacturing of power and machinery such as blacksmithing and foundry to support agriculture. Such historical developments have shaped the less risky and easier importation culture than local manufacture of the agricultural machinery at the expense of exports of raw agricultural and natural resource products. The foreign exchange revenues could have financed infrastructures and manufacturing equipment. The vision of President Quirino (1948-1953) to strengthen industrialization by initially protecting the fledgling industries that he encouraged to be established during his term was met with strong opposition lobby among the import oriented business sector of the time and led to his failure to get re-elected for a second term. What started out as an economic tiger in Asia, second only to Japan, resulted in the Philippines being a laggard among the newly industrializing countries because the succeeding administrations ignored his vision of an industrialized Philippines although President Marcos (1965-1986) and President Ramos (1992-1998) revived it, albeit partially during their terms. Part II discusses the current status of agricultural mechanization, which may lead to the formulation of strategies as provided by the Agriculture and Fisheries Mechanization (AFMech) Law of 2013, a landmark legislation that firms up the policy of modernizing Philippine agriculture through agricultural mechanization supported by the installation of institutional and physical infrastructures starting in the early 1970s. Industrialization for economic development is recommended as strategy to support agricultural development.
