UCPB launches program for coconut 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 their 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.