Aggie 10 F2C2 prompts rice clusters to adopt B2B agri-marketing</h6

Cagayan de Oro City – The Department Agriculture – Regional Field Office 10 (Aggie 10) urged rice clusters in Northern Mindanao to adopt business-to-business marketing strategies to foster sustainable growth in rice production and trade.

In the recently concluded Rice Clusters Forum organized by the Aggie 10 Farm and Fishery Clustering and Consolidation (F2C2) Program in time with the National Rice Awareness Month (NRAM), leaders of rice farmers’ associations and cooperatives in the region were told to embrace market-first farming system by forging partnership with institutional buyers.

Through the forum the Aggie NorMin F2C2 bridged the rice cluster-leaders and the DA partner government and private partners.

In said forum, the DSWD Region 10 conveyed the salient features of the Enhanced Partnership Against Hunger and Poverty (EPAHP) Program, through which the DSWD may contract rice clusters in the region to supply rice for its feeding program. Under the DSWD’s Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP), rice farmers may avail of a livelihood package for rice production and processing to augment their livelihood.

The Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) and Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) also presented the financial assistance program offered by the government for individual rice farmers and their associations and cooperatives, as an added financial resource for increased production.

The rice farmers were also apprised on the national and regional rice industry situation by the DA-10 Rice program, highlighting the MASAGANA rice industry development strategy to rev up the country’s rice production – MAtatag (resilience and climate adaptation), Sama-sama (farm clustering and consolidation), GAnado (farmer engagement and motivation), and NApapanahon (digital transformation and timely interventions).

In his message, Aggie 10 Regional Executive Director Jose Apollo Y. Pacamalan urged rice farmers to shun the use of inorganic farm inputs, stating dependency to such inputs will result in higher cost of rice production. Instead, he called on the rice farmers to transition to rice-duck integrated farming system to mitigate rising inputs’ costs while producing safer rice for local consumption.

To date, the DA-10 F2C2 has organized 89 rice clusters across the 5 provinces of Northern Mindanao. Each cluster is composed of a group of rice farmers tilling an aggregate of 100 hectares rice area, at minimum.

Through the F2C2, the DA pushed for farmers and fishers’ organizations to form a cluster and consolidate their products to achieve economies of scale, strengthen their bargaining power, and gain better market access to scale up their production and income. # (ATT)