Philippines
Discussion topic outcome
The government emphasized that the resilience of farming communities can be addressed through the following interventions: 1. Social resilience - working with groups instead of individuals in crafting policy-based interventions on crop diversification, climate-smart technologies, inclusive financing, etc; 2) Technology - adoption of appropriate technologies that can reduce pollution of soil and water due to agricultural farming activities and climate-smart production methodologies. Further, the government highlighted importance of farmers’ group consolidation in order to achieve economies of
... Read more scale. There were also cross-cutting policy recommendations such as: 1) Increasing the competitiveness of smallholder farmers by providing them with access to services, technologies, and entrepreneurial mentoring and coaching; 2) Securing land tenure rights for smallholder farmers and clustering for economies of scale, which need further evaluation in terms of the proper interventions that should be implemented; and 3) Joint call for UN to set-up Farmers Resiliency and Empowerment Trust Fund. There were other concerns/recommendations/proposed actions from the participants such as the following: 1. The implementation of gender-sensitive programs should be considered. 2. There are systems that don’t work with other systems and a balance needs to be struck among them. 3. The ballooning population and high caloric intake were also some of the major concerns. 4. There is also a need to work for a sustainable food system to achieve the 17 sustainable development goals of the UNFS. There are five action tracks, all of which need game-changing solutions. 5. The protection of food-producing areas in the policy track, and that when there are policy conflicts, agricultural development should be favored. 6. There is a need to ensure that farmers’ incomes are enough. Moreover, it was mentioned that additional processing at the farm level can increase farmers’ income. The importance of balancing the capacity of consumers and income of producers, was also emphasized, since farmers are also consumers. 7. On cost of production, it was agreed that farmers/fishers submit its cost of production on key crops: rice, coconut, coffee, and some vegetable to compare with the current cost of production computation of DA. The purpose is to validate the costing and serve as guide on programs and policy interventions that ensures incomes for small producers. The government representatives provided responses and clarifications on the above cited concerns, policy recommendations and actions. These are as follows: 1. On the production cost, relevant government agencies should also push for farmer education for them to know how to calculate production cost and appropriate selling price to avoid losses. 2. Safe food starts from the production stage and reiterated the need for literacy training for the farmers and fishers. 3. There is also a need to push for farmer education for them to know how to calculate production cost and appropriate selling price to avoid losses. 4. To increase the purchasing power of the farmers, the bottlenecks across the value chain should be addressed. 5. The multiplication of good seeds and connectivity of businesses should also be supported by the government. 6. To ensure food safety, the government needs to continue the development of standards for every agricultural product. 7. Global supply chains should be looked into for a guided decision to sell local or go global. 8. On the proposal to review the government infrastructures that play a part in food production, it was suggested to implement location-specific government interventions. 9. There should be a unified database in order to address the concern on prices, supply and demand. 10. On the concern about the implementation of policies, the government will need to look into the existing laws and the loopholes and gaps. 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