TAGUIG CITY (MindaNews/31 May 2026)– Mindanao has always been described through the abundance of what it possesses.

Land. Water. Forests. Farms. Minerals. Energy. Ports. Coastlines. Young cities. Open spaces. Strategic location. A bridge to ASEAN. A breadbasket. A power source. A frontier.

For generations, this has been the language of promise. Mindanao, we were told, had enough land to feed the country, enough rivers to power industry, enough minerals to attract investment, enough farms to sustain exports, enough space to host the next wave of growth.

But the next frontier may no longer be land. It may be talent.

The question before Mindanao is no longer simply: What do we have? The harder question is: Who will build it? Who will plant the next generation of farms when the average farmer is already aging? Who will run the machines in factories that are no longer simple assembly lines but technology-driven production floors? Who will design irrigation systems, manage cold chains, program drones, maintain solar farms, operate data centers, build agri-processing brands, and govern new institutions?

Mindanao has resources. What it may soon lack are enough people willing and able to turn those resources into value.

This is the development challenge that does not always appear in investment brochures. Roads can be built. Ports can be expanded. Power lines can be extended. Industrial estates can be declared. But a skilled workforce cannot be created by ribbon-cutting. It must be cultivated early, patiently, and deliberately.

Mindanao’s future will not be secured by infrastructure alone. It will be secured by people who know what to do with that infrastructure.

The clearest warning sign is agriculture. Mindanao remains one of the country’s most important food-producing regions. Its farms supply bananas, pineapples, coconuts, cacao, coffee, corn, rice, vegetables, and fisheries.

Yet beneath the reassuring language of food security is a quiet demographic problem: many farmers are growing old, and many of their children do not want to farm.

This is not because the young have lost respect for the land. It is because the land has often failed to reward those who work it. Farming remains physically demanding, financially uncertain, vulnerable to weather, dependent on middlemen, and too often associated with hardship rather than dignity.

So the children leave. They go to Davao, Cagayan de Oro, General Santos, Cebu, Manila, Dubai,

Singapore, Canada, or wherever work appears more predictable. The family farm becomes a fallback, not a future. Agriculture becomes an inheritance no one is sure they want to claim.

This is dangerous. A region can have fertile land and still lose its food future if it loses its farmers. It can have good soil and still remain poor if its young people do not see farming as technology, enterprise, and profession.

The solution is not to romanticise the farmer’s life. The solution is to make agriculture worth staying for. That means agritech. Mechanization. Better credit. Crop insurance. Irrigation. Storage. Processing. Branding. Digital market access. Farm schools that teach enterprise, not just production. Cooperatives that are professionally managed. Young farmers who are trained not only to plant, but to negotiate, compute, package, export, and innovate.

The farmer of the future will not simply carry a bolo and a sack. He may also carry a tablet, operate a drone, read soil data, manage online orders, and understand global prices.

If Mindanao wants to keep its young people in agriculture, it must stop asking them to inherit poverty. It must offer them a future.

The same challenge applies to industry. For decades, Mindanao has aspired to move beyond raw materials. We have exported bananas, pineapples, coconut oil, ores, and other commodities, while much of the higher value has been captured elsewhere. The dream has always been to process more, manufacture more, brand more, and keep more wealth at home.

But factories today are not the factories of the past. Advanced manufacturing requires technicians, engineers, machine operators, quality-control specialists, logistics managers, food technologists, data analysts, and maintenance crews trained for increasingly complex systems.

Even ordinary production now requires digital competence. The worker of tomorrow must be comfortable with sensors, software, automation, robotics, and precision.

This is where Mindanao must be honest. It cannot attract the industries of the future with the skills of the past. It cannot build a modern economy on underpaid labor alone. Cheap labor may

attract low-value investment, but skilled labor attracts industries that stay, upgrade, and deepen.

The competition is no longer only about land prices, tax incentives, or electricity rates. It is about whether investors can find people who can do the work.

This is why universities, technical schools, local governments, and industry must stop operating in separate worlds. Curriculum must speak to actual jobs. Training must match real demand. Scholarships must be tied to strategic sectors. Local governments must know not only how many jobs they want to create, but what skills those jobs will require.

Mindanao needs an education-to-employment strategy. Not vague employability. Not ceremonial partnerships. Not another memorandum of agreement for photographs.

It needs serious mapping: What workers will agribusiness need in five years? What technicians will renewable energy require? What skills will logistics, cold chain, data centers, food processing, shipbuilding, mining rehabilitation, and advanced manufacturing demand? Which cities can specialize? Which provinces can train? Which schools can deliver?

The next development plan must count not only roads and bridges, but welders, coders, agronomists, nurses, machinists, teachers, engineers, and entrepreneurs.

Then there is the digital question. Artificial intelligence, data infrastructure, automation, and platform-based work are reshaping economies everywhere. Mindanao cannot afford to treat

these as distant trends belonging only to Manila, Singapore, or Silicon Valley.

The digital economy will need power, land, cooling, connectivity, cybersecurity, and technical talent. Mindanao has some of these ingredients. It has energy potential. It has available space. It has growing urban centers. It has universities. It has young people hungry for opportunity.

But the opportunity will not arrive automatically. A data center does not create a digital economy by itself. A fiber-optic cable does not create innovation by itself. A startup event does not create an ecosystem by itself.

What matters is the human network around them: programmers, engineers, designers, cybersecurity specialists, entrepreneurs, mentors, investors, regulators, and customers.

Mindanao must prepare not only for jobs that exist today, but for jobs that are still forming.

This is where the BARMM question becomes especially important. The Bangsamoro region is often discussed through the lens of peace, autonomy, elections, and institutional stability. These are essential. But there is another dimension that deserves more attention: demography.

A young population can be a burden or a blessing. It can become a source of frustration, unemployment, and instability. Or it can become the strongest foundation for growth.

BARMM’s youth may be one of Mindanao’s greatest assets if education, skills training, entrepreneurship, and peace dividends are aligned early enough.

The region does not merely need buildings called schools. It needs learning that leads somewhere. It needs pathways from madrasa to technical training, from community school to enterprise, from local livelihood to regional industry.

Peace will be more durable if young people can imagine a future larger than grievance. This is why human capital must be treated as peace infrastructure. A road connects towns. A school connects generations. A job connects a young person to society. A business connects hope to discipline. A skilled workforce connects autonomy to actual self-government.

If BARMM can educate, train, and employ its young population well, it will not simply reduce poverty. It will strengthen peace. The larger danger for Mindanao is that its best people may continue to leave faster than its institutions can create reasons for them to stay.

Migration is not always a loss. Overseas and domestic migration have helped families survive, educated children, built homes, and sustained local economies through remittances. Many Mindanawons have gained skills elsewhere that can eventually return home.

But when departure becomes the only serious path to dignity, a region pays a hidden price. Communities lose teachers, nurses, engineers, entrepreneurs, professionals, and civic leaders.

Towns receive remittances but lose presence. Families improve incomes but endure distance. Provinces celebrate success stories that happened somewhere else.

The goal should not be to stop people from leaving. The goal should be to make staying a real choice. A young engineer from Iligan should be able to build a career in Mindanao. A

nurse from Cotabato should not have to leave the country to feel valued. A farmer’s daughter from Bukidnon should be able to turn cacao into a brand, not merely a crop. A programmer from Davao should be able to work for the world without abandoning home.

That is the promise of the next Mindanao economy: rooted but connected. To get there, we must change the way we define development. For too long, development has been measured by what government builds and what investors announce. Roads. Bridges. Airports. Industrial parks. Power plants. Mining projects. Export targets. These matter. Mindanao needs them. But they are incomplete.

The deeper measure is whether these projects raise the capacity of people. Does a road help farmers earn more, or merely help traders extract faster? Does a mine create skilled local employment, or only temporary labor and permanent damage? Does an industrial estate train workers, or import them? Does a university produce graduates for actual industries, or diplomas for unemployment? Does autonomy create institutions, or merely positions?

The future belongs to regions that learn faster than they consume, train faster than they lose workers, and organize talent faster than opportunity passes them by.

Mindanao must become such a region. This requires a different kind of leadership. Not only leaders who can negotiate budgets, but leaders who can build systems. Not only leaders who promise jobs, but leaders who understand skills. Not only leaders who attract investors, but leaders who prepare communities to benefit from investment.

Every province should have a talent strategy. Every major city should know its economic niche. Every state university and college should be asked a practical question: What future are you preparing students for?

Every technical- vocational center should be connected to real employers. Every scholarship

should be treated as a development investment, not merely a political favor. Agriculture schools should train agripreneurs. Engineering schools should support renewable energy, water systems, and manufacturing. IT programs should connect to cybersecurity, AI tools, software services, and logistics platforms. Health programs should prepare for aging communities and medical tourism. Business schools should help local producers move from raw material to brand ownership.

Mindanao does not need talent in the abstract. It needs talent matched to its future. And that future is already visible.

Food security will require young farmers and food technologists. Climate adaptation will require engineers, planners, hydrologists, and disaster scientists. Renewable energy will require technicians and grid specialists.

Mining, if allowed, will require environmental scientists, safety professionals, and rehabilitation experts. Tourism will require hospitality workers, guides, designers, storytellers, and conservation managers. Digital industries will require coders, analysts, and cybersecurity teams.

BARMM governance will require administrators, lawyers, teachers, planners, and public servants who understand both autonomy and accountability.

The opportunity is large. The preparation must be larger. Mindanao has spent generations proving that it is rich in resources. The next decade will test whether it can become rich in capability.

Land can be idle. Minerals can be extracted. Rivers can be dammed. Power can be transmitted. Ports can be expanded. But only people can turn assets into destiny.

The frontier has moved. It is no longer only in the valleys of Bukidnon, the coasts of Zamboanga, the plains of Cotabato, the mountains of Davao, the waters of Lanao, or the cities rising across the island.

The frontier is in the classroom, the workshop, the farm laboratory, the startup desk, the training center, the cooperative office, the factory floor, and the young mind wondering whether there is a future worth staying for.

Mindanao’s next great resource is not buried underground. It is not waiting in the forest, the field, or the river.

It is sitting in classrooms, riding motorcycles to work, leaving for Manila, applying abroad, helping parents on farms, scrolling through job sites, taking board exams, learning code at night, or wondering whether home has room for ambition.

The task is to answer that question with more than slogans. Who will build Mindanao’s future?

The honest answer is: only the people we prepare, respect, retain, and trust. And if we fail to do that, all the land, water, minerals, and energy in the world will not be enough.

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. South of the 8th Parallel is a reflective civic column written from the vantage point of a Mindanao-born senior who has lived the arc from Ozamiz to Cotabato, Davao, Manila, Cagayan de Oro, and now Taguig. The 8th Parallel North is the line of latitude eight degrees above the Equator that runs across Mindanao, placing the island firmly in the tropical belt and slightly removed from the country’spolitical center. Rooted in memory yet attentive to policy, the column examines Mindanao’s concerns—governance, development, peace, inequality, migration, faith, and aging—with the steadiness of lived experience. This is not a view from the capital looking south, but a life shaped by the South looking outward, seeking perspective over noise and endurance over spectacle.)