Value chain dev’t improves market productivity — SEARCA

The Philippine government-hosted Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) has stressed the importance of value chain development towards improving market system productivity while highly regarding marginalized farmers’ inclusivity.

SEARCA pioneers the value chain development course in keeping with its focus on inclusive and sustainable agricultural and rural development (ISARD), which is aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all.

Gil Saguiguit Jr., director of SEARCA, cited the significance of value chain development in driving agricultural and rural development in Southeast Asia.

He counts training course among SEARCA’s efforts to strengthen social inclusion to promote greater participation and productivity of farmers and rural producers.

With social inclusion as one of ISARD’s defining elements, the course pushes how marginalized actors can be given precedence to economically and socially include or upgrade them in the agricultural value chain.

Saguiguit said training is a vital step in developing a value chain framework that will facilitate the equitable integration of smallholder farmers and rural entrepreneurs in regionally integrated and borderless agribusiness markets.

“We believe that efforts to integrate small-scale farmers into commercial food systems is key to national and overall regional development, especially in view of the ASEAN economic integration,” Saguiguit said.

Meanwhile, Wilfredo Carada of the University of the Philippines Los Baños-College of Public Affairs and Development, who led the team of resource persons, affirmed that looking through a value chain lens defines inclusive and pro-poor development in its truest sense.

Through this, smallholders, small-scale businesses, landless laborers, and women, who participate in agricultural value chains as producers, traders, processors, laborers and retailers, can get a fair share in the value chain process.

“What we need to embrace is the inclusive definition of the value chain. This means we need to make the poor participate directly in economic activities, and make their participation translate into increased income and improved well-being. We must not merely rely on the “trickle down” process in aiming for sustainable development,” Carada said.