Independent Dialogue
Geographical focus:
Philippines
Main findings
Action Track 1. • Need strong promotion among children and adults on nutrition, food safety and effects on health. Provide nutritional information about organic products. Reduce food wastage. • Need to educate farmers and producers about underlying principles of organic agriculture beyond crop production. Need topics on entrepreneurship, marketing, organizational strengthening, as well as post-harvest technologies, packaging and processing of food and non-food organic products, organic standards and certification. Lack of competent trainers on relevant topics. • Farmers are still at the
... Read moremercy of traders. • Much focus on Agri-tourism results to land not fully-utilized to scale-up organic crop or animal production. Organic crops are mainly for display and special food for paying guests. • Low technology adoption by farmers. Need conscious effort for results of Research and Development to reach farmers. Need for proper diagnosis of farmers problems and circumstances. • Lack of organic inputs like standard quality and enough volume of organic soil amendments and almost no local production of organic vegetable seeds. Some resort to imported inputs which are expensive. • Lack of certified slaughter-houses dedicated for use of smallholder organic animal raisers, cold chain facilities, refrigerated transport. Action Track 2. • Limited market and access to OA products which are more expensive than non-organic ones and not always available in the market • Inadequate institutional support system and incentives to producer groups that provide safe, nutritious and healthy food; • Limited appreciation of the consumers on safe, nutritious and healthy diets; to those who can appreciate, they cannot afford the higher price. They resort to buying cheaper non-organic products. • Need to enhance information dissemination via the social media educate the consumers about true cost accounting in organic production systems. • Need to lobby with the concerned government agencies for incentivizing the providers of healthy and safe food; • Strengthen collaboration with the different stakeholders to increase the public and consumer’s knowledge for informed decision-making when they buy organic products. Action Track 3. • Boosting nature-positive production is multidimensional. It cuts across ecological, education, policy, social and economic dimensions. Promote true cost accounting of ecological and societal benefits. • Despite the diverse ideas, participants agreed on a common goal of striking a balance between and among the five dimensions. • Promote the importance of soil health to food production, environmental conservation and addressing climate change. • Address threats to biodiversity and the environment due to habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution. • Commit to conduct youth education that integrate biodiversity in organic agriculture. • Open consultations among stakeholders • Need academe and private sector/industry linkages. Action Track 4. • Promote agricultural enterprise development with policy reform on labor wages and employment opportunities in agriculture. Need options to address seasonality of labor in agriculture. • Need adequate infrastructure support to address basic agricultural productivity constraints like farm mechanization, irrigation, post-harvest and processing facilities) and socio-cultural constraints to bring the community to act for change. • Need flexible and accessible financial instruments to wean farmers away from unscrupulous traders and money lenders. • New strategies to motivate the youth to agriculture. Action Track 5. • The Philippines ranks 3rd as the world’s most natural disaster-prone countries thus the strong need for disaster risk-reduction and mitigation (DRRM) strategies. • Increase participation of stakeholders including farmers in program planning, implementation and monitoring progress of DRRM programs. • Limited opportunities to earn supplemental income while waiting for crop harvests or during disastrous events. • Inadequate local government policies for organic agricultural systems, certification and participatory guarantee systems. • Minimal policy support for promotion and adoption of indigenous knowledge systems and practices. • limited knowledge and awareness on OA practices, related to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Read less
Action Track(s): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Keywords: Environment and Climate, Finance, Governance, Human rights, Innovation, Policy, Trade-offs, Women & Youth Empowerment