Research project on agri-food market structure on

LOS BAÑOS, Laguna – An international research project on the global agriculture-food market structure is on.

The three-year undertaking is titled "Regoverning Markets: Securing Small Producer Participation in Restructured National and Regional Agri-food Systems."

It was initiated by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) based in the United Kingdom, the Royal Tropical Institute (RTI) of the Netherlands, and the Red de Informacion de Metodologia de Investigacion de Sistemas de Produccion (RIMISP) of Chile.

Funded by the UK-Department of International Development (DFID), the project will cover Southeast Asia, South Asia, East and Southern Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and Central and South America.

The project aims to describe the changing structure of the agriculture-food market, and analyze their impacts on the smallholders and their livelihoods.

Among those to be involved in the international research effort is the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) hosted by the government on the UP Los Baños (UPLB) campus here.

SEARCA, headed by Director Arsenio M. Balisacan, is one of the 15 "centers of excellence" of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO), an intergovernment body founded in 1965 to foster cooperation among Southeast Asian nations in the fields of education, science, and culture.

Dr. Balisacan, a UP professor in Economics and former Agriculture undersecretary, welcomed the project "as a way of meeting the special needs of agricultural economies."

Dr. Nerlita Manalili, SEARCA Research and Development Department (RDD) manager, has been chosen by the Regoverning Market Program’s initiators as the regional coordinator for Southeast Asia.

Dr. Manalili, who holds a doctorate in Economics from UP, had earlier done research works in Southeast Asia on, among other things, supply chain management and small and medium enterprises.

She also participated in the "Regoverning Market’s Planning and Methodology Workshop" in London where she and other project team members presented situations in their respective regions. The 20 other workshop participants were from the seven regional study sites and from the World Bank.

"The program’s goal," Dr. Manalili said, "is to strengthen the resilience of rural economies in light of changes in the marketing structure as a result of trends in global trade. Basically, it will identify and assess strategies of smaller-scale producers, and small and medium enterprises in responding to agriculture-food restructuring and resultant stiffer competition in the national and regional markets."

The study centers on enterprises involved in food marketing and processing.

Dr. Manalili said that the program’s first phase is focused on getting an overview of the extent of agri-food restructuring. For Southeast Asia, the countries initially identified were Thailand and Vietnam.

She expressed the hope that the Philippines could be also included.

Each country has a selected coordinator to do a country scoping study on supply chain for two selected commodities. SEARCA will identify these country coordinators and will work closely with them.

The target completion date for the country studies is October 2004.

By November, planning for the second phase will commence where the focus will be on detailed case studies per region and an empirical analysis across the case studies.