UCPB creates networking structure for coco farmers

UCPB’s social arm, the UCPB-CIIF Foundation, has launched a novel initiative that will foster working partnerships among coconut farmers’ cooperatives across the country, open new market and trade opportunities for them, and provide the individual coconut farmer-members the stimuli to expand their production, processing, marketing and income-generating capabilities.

Called the Market Linkage Program, the UCPB-CIIF Foundation’s new initiative aims to organize its accredited coconut farmers’ cooperatives all over the country into a network with close links to private institutions and government agencies.

The UCPB-CIIF Foundation currently has 589 accredited cooperatives with a combined membership of 348, 102 farmers. These cooperatives receive a package of assistance from the UCPB-CIIF Foundation’s Countryside Economic Development Program. The assistance includes technical training and values education as well as credit facilities. To date, the cooperatives have been granted P386 million in loans to finance their livelihood projects.

UCPB-CIIF Foundation president Edgardo C. Amistad said organizing the cooperatives into a network will provide the coconut farmers with an organized structure for communicating among themselves, exchanging trade information, learning from each other’s experiences, tapping one another’s expertise and forging business alliances not only among themselves but also with private corporations for marketing tie-ups, and with government and non-government organizations for technical assistance.

"With such a network in place, a cooperative in Quezon can network with a cooperative in Mindanao to look for outlets for its products and vice versa. Or a cooperative in Pampanga can send delegates to learn a new business that has proven successful for a cooperative in say Iloilo. Hopefully, in time the farmers will be doing business on their own without relying on our intervention, which is our goal in the first place," says Amistad.

According to Amistad, the UCPB-CIIF Foundation has already formed four local networks with 55 accredited cooperatives from the Bicol Region, the Visayas, and Northern Luzon, and their response to the concept of a network of cooperatives has been very enthusiastic.

In fact, Amistad says, as a result of the formation of a network in the Visayas, 26 accredited cooperatives in Panay and Guimaras, will have for an initial joint venture the procurement of palay. The member-cooperatives in Antique will supply some 5,000 cavans of palay to their fellow network member, the Southern Iloilo Area Multi-Purpose Cooperative (SIAMSI).

SIAMSI is one of the biggest farmers’ cooperatives in the region. It supplies rice to the public markets in the towns of Guimaras, Central, Molo and Arevalo as well as to the big restaurants in Iloilo City.

To link the local net-works into onevast nation-wide network, the Founda-tion will create a database of all its accredited cooperatives. Once this is done, there will be greater inter-regional marketing of agricultural commodities and exchange of services among the accredited cooperatives, Amistad said.