Agriculture today faces many challenges, including globalization and market liberalization, food price crises, natural resource depletion, climate change, rapid urbanization, changing production and consumption patterns, demographic changes, pandemic, soil health, invasive crop pest and so on. With a growing recognition of the important role of smallholder agriculture for economic growth and rural development in many countries, market-oriented agriculture appears more prominently on the agenda (GFRAS, 2020). 

In an earlier publication by Mula (2020) on `Agripreneurship as an enterprise: a boon to SAAD program´, he stated that one way to revitalized and modernized agriculture sector is through agripreneurship as an enterprise. He further reiterated that real development is people development.

With the Special Area for Agricultural Development (SAAD) Program having one of its components, the `Marketing Assistance and Enterprise Development´ has the objective to help communities create enterprises by establishing market linkages and providing technical assistance and logistic support. The program, a locally funded project of the Department of Agriculture, was created in 2017 to contribute to the poverty alleviation of poorest of the poor farmers from 30 priority provinces.

The program provides a wide range of agricultural livelihood interventions from production, processing and marketing-related inputs to its farmer-beneficiaries. One of its major end goals is the establishment of community-based agri-enterprises to ensure the sustainability of the beneficiaries’ source of income. The aim is not only to contribute to the betterment of the lives of its beneficiaries but also the improvement of the whole community by providing quality, nutritious, accessible, and more affordable products in the area.  

Before the establishment of such enterprises, livelihood projects on production of crops and livestock were provided to farmer-beneficiaries to efficiently produce the main source of products they wish to market. In addition, social preparation and technical training on production to marketing were provided to improve farming practices and management.

Dir. Mula emphasized the importance of marketing assistance and enterprise development as it will shape farmers to become successful entrepreneurs. SAAD will provide the beneficiaries with marketing assistance and linkage, conduct entrepreneurial capability-building programs, and upscale livelihood into enterprises through collaboration with partners (local government units, private sector, and government agencies).

From 2017 to 2019, a total of 45 agri-enterprises worth Php 33,787,470.00 were established across 6 SAAD provinces managed by 45 groups/associations covering 24 types of community-based enterprise (Tables 1 and 2) with 1,172 farmer group members (Table 2). These provinces include Apayao (CAR), Samar Provinces (Region 8), Southern Leyte (Region 8) and Zamboanga del Norte (Region 9). These enterprises vary from selling fresh and processed crops of vegetables, fruits; and livestock (live & processed) and poultry products (dressed chicken, eggs, quail eggs, and salted eggs). 

For 2020 until 2022, the program aims to continue providing agricultural interventions as support to its beneficiaries. These includes various livelihood agri interventions, technical training and capacity building activities in preparation to the establishment of its target community based enterprises.

Table 2. Detailed enterprise established by province (2017 – 2019).

Writers: Myer Mula and Jemiema Arro

References:

Global Forum for Rural Advisory Service (GFRAS). 2020. The role of RAS for inclusive agripreneurship. Background and rationale. Retrieved from https://www.g-fras.org/en/ agripreneurship.html#:~:text=With%20a%20growing%20recognition%20of,refers%20to%20entrepreneurship%20in%20agriculture.

Mula MG. 2020. Agripreneurship as an enterprise: A boon to SAAD program. Special Area for Agricultural Development (SAAD) Program. Department of Agriculture. SAADvocacy 2(5):4&8. ISSN 2718-9791.