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How To Bring Food Prizes Down? Start At The Farm, Not The Market!

Yes, when it comes to food, you can have everything today, despite the lockdown. That promise we get from government action, as reported by ANN – “DA-ACPC Expands Agri-Negosyo (ANYO) Loan Program To Help Strengthen Food Supply Chain[1]” (Author Not Named, 10 April 2021, ACPC.gov.ph).

Above, Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) Executive Director Jocelyn Alma R Badiola talks to marketers, part of a series of consultations to enable the ACPC to develop a food-supply-chain-financing program to directly link farmers’ cooperatives and associations (FCAs) as suppliers, to market vendors’ associations (MVAs) in Metro Manila as sellers. FCAs will produce what MVAs will sell in a smooth, continuous supply chain.

Secretary of Agriculture William Dar, ex-officio head of the Department of Agriculture (DA), to which the ACPC is attached, says:

We are initiating this financing program to institutionalize mutual partnership between the farmers’ cooperatives and associations (FCAs) and market vendors, and create a “win-win” situation benefiting producers, retailers and consumers.

To complement the price cap declared 08 February 2021 via Executive Order 124 of President Rodrigo Duterte, the ACPC will implement a zero-interest non-collateral loan program offering working capital, not exceeding P5 million, to farmers’ and fishers’ cooperatives & associations (FCAs). Also on that date, Ms Jocelyn, along with ACPC Program Development & Management Division Director Cristina Lopez, and other ACPC officers and staff, joined DA Assistant Secretary for Agribusiness & Marketing Assistance Service (AMAS) Kristine Evangelista, in a dialogue with market vendors at the Commonwealth Market in Quezon City. On 10 February, Miss Jocelyn and ACPC officers joined DA Undersecretary for Fisheries & Agri-Industrialization Cheryl Marie Caballero in a meeting with Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte. All the consultations were meant to finalize the terms and implementing guidelines for the program, which will be launched this month.

Under the financing program, the ACPC will engage their partner lending conduits such as the Agri Negosyo Loan Program and KAYA Loan Program to extend working capital loans – that is, revolving funds – to FCAs for them to purchase agriculture and/or fishery produce from member farmers/fishers. With the loans, the DA Regional Field Offices (RFOs) and AMAS will assist the FCAs into entering into a marketing agreement with individual market vendors who will pre-order the goods through an Ordering System. To pre-qualify, the vendors have to be individually endorsed by their MVAs. It is hoped that the Ordering System will reduce wastage of goods as the vendors will be dealing directly with suppliers.

Also, the RFO and AMAS will assist in transporting produce to the designated Bagsakan (sheltered & capacious drop point with restroom). After that, the vendors will receive the produce and sell to consumers at prices lower than or equal to the suggested retail prices. Thus, both the farmer and consumer groups are protected from vendors who otherwise would change the prices to the latter’s own delight.

Not only the production but also marketing system should be in order, for the sake of both food producers and consumers, who have always been on the losing ends.@517


[1]https://acpc.gov.ph/da-acpc-expands-agri-negosyo-anyo-loan-program-to-help-strengthen-food-supply-chain/

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