Skip to main content

“ACPC Financial Services?” – Good! “Farmers’ “Financial Management?” – Bad!

 

If you know what you need to do, you will keep doing it.

On page 119 of the coffee-table book The Filipino Farmer Is Bankable, the volume I produced for the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) to celebrate its Silver Anniversary on 25 April 2012, can be found these entries:

Vision
The ACPC is the institution on agri credit policy and program development that promotes sustainable and effective delivery of financial services in the countryside.

Mission
To develop and advocate agri credit policies and orchestrate programs that would promote farmers’ and fishers’ access to sustained financial services.

9 years later, on the ACPC website, ACPC.gov.ph, word-for-word the exact same Vision and Mission Statements[1] appear. What does that signify?

To me, it shows that the ACPC, after clearly defining its role in the nationwide development of PH Agriculture as an agency of the Department of Agriculture(DA), has remained steadfast in its institutional commitments. I find that unusual for any DA agency – and I must congratulate the ACPC for institutional clarity, commitment, and concretization!

Note that ACPC’s Vision is two-pronged: (a) development of sustainable policies & programs on agri credit, and (b) effective delivery of financial services to the countryside.

Other agencies may mention the word “sustainable” in their public statements and in the news reports emanating from them, but “sustainability” is seldom mentioned and even more seldom measured in their activities. 

I am referring to the sustainability of the enterprise of the small farmer. The Filipino farmers are historically non-viable or non-economically sound, and it will take a long time for the DA, even with the outstanding Team Captainship of Secretary of Agriculture William Dar, to help their business become economically viable, not to mention their farming environmentally sound.

“Your credit is good, but we need cash” is a sign in many a Pinoy variety store. The great majority of Pinoy farmers are always in need of cash because they do not manage their financial resources, relying on the Fast Cash of the moneylender, notwithstanding the charge of 20% for any loan. Always on Fast Cash, the farmer pays over-the-counter for his seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides – and these are his major expenses.

What to do? All farmer trainings, actual or virtual, have to be overhauled and designed with financial management inputted from beginning to end.

Here are instances for farmers to practice financial management:

Loans – Be a member of a cooperative; you will enjoy affordable loans.
Seeds – (1) Buy the variety appropriate to the season and field, with recorded high yield. (2) Sow only 20 kg of expensive hybrid seeds to grow seedlings for transplanting, not 40-50 kg.
Fertilizers – Do not over-fertilize.
Pesticides – Do not over-spray. Better, practice multiple cropping or trap cropping, zero pesticides.
Marketing – Your cooperative will sell your produce when the price is right!

The ACPC is for Financial Services and can only do so much. The farmer himself must be taught Financial Management, and this is the duty of those public & private trainers of farmers.

Now then, business-minded farmers, may their tribe increase!@517


[1]http://210.5.72.214/acpc/about/vision-mission/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Historical PH 1st Holy Mass: Mazaua Or Limasawa? Fr Amalla Vs Maria Serena Diokno Vs Ambeth Ocampo – And The Priest Is Right!

We Filipinos celebrate 500 years of Christianity today Wednesday, 31 March 2021, Christianity brought to pagans by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailing the seas for Spain. The historical question is: Where was the first Holy Mass celebrated: “Limasawa” (in Leyte) or “Mazaua” (in Butuan)? Catholic priest Fr Joesilo C Amalla has just published the book (above), An Island They Called Mazaua, that argues the island of “Mazaua” in Butuan is the “true site of first Holy Mass in the Philippines [1] ”  and not “Limasawa” in Leyte (ANN, 07 January 2021, Manila Times ). The declaration and discussion are made by Butuan-based Fr Amalla in his 644-page book. Among other things, he writes: The truth is that the prevailing state- and church-affirmation and multiple reaffirmations of the island of Limasawa as the site of that first Holy Mass have no factual, historical and geographic (bases) whatsoever nor any shred of evidentiary support from cartographic studies, navigational info...
Post a Comment
Read more

07, The More The Merrier – P1B From DA Supportive Of 10 Bataan Model Farms Leading PH Agriculture

Very optimistic – and excited – was Secretary of Agriculture William Dar after visiting 2 model 1-ha farms in the villages of Daang Bago and San Simon in the town of Dinalupihan, Bataan, Friday, 19 February 2021. He said in the DA news release “Bataan Model Farms Demonstrate Future Of Philippine Agriculture” (20 February 2021): I am thrilled to have seen the progress of this rice-high-value crops diversification system evolving in the Municipality of Dinalupihan. We were here when the idea was being conceived in 2019 and now it has really started its journey, its development. As an agriculturist and a communicator for development in the last 45 years, I know: That it is all markedly historical for the Philippines. The cropping calls for rice in the wet season, and high-value crops (vegetables) in the dry season, with fertigation (fertilization via irrigation). And the technology-setup is replicated 10 times in the same municipality. (I don’t know why, but 60-year old foreign-funde...
Post a Comment
Read more

03, The More The Merrier – PH Needs More Hogs In Manila, Less Critics!

“Pinoys absolutely love pork. Randomly enter a restaurant and there’s a fat chance you’ll sniff the rousing aroma of sizzling sisig , grilled liempo or if your host is big-time, lechon – a whole roasted pig!” That’s what Gregg Yan say s [1] (03 January 2020, Thepigsite.com ). Count me in! I just love to bite into the crispy skin of a lechon and never ever think of hypertension – I’m just lean & mean. (lower “Backyard Pig Farming” image [2]  from PCARRD.dost.gov.ph ) There is some unsolicited advice about what to do with the current problematic PH supply of pork because of the African Swine Fever (ASF), comment/advice slyly directed at Secretary of Agriculture William Dar . Thank you, but you are assuming Mr Dar has no “Whole-Hog Plan” if I may call it that. You don’t know Mr Dar has been a science manager for 33 years, up to and including his incredible stint as the longest-running Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (I...
Post a Comment
Read more