No more poor farmers!
Easier said than done. “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men's cottages princes' palaces” – Portia, The Merchant Of Venice
Coops to the rescue!
Because, as an English proverb says,
“Many hands make light work.”
Given the decades-old poverty problems of PH Agriculture exacerbated by the pandemic lockdown, given that I am an alumnus of the University of the Philippines Los Baños, UP Los Baños, that I have been a digital-based crusading writer since 2005, and that I have been a member of the Nagkaisa Multipurpose Cooperative for several years, I have been earnestly thinking of real & digital “Super Coops” as private partners of the Department of Agriculture, DA, in the national effort towards inclusivedevelopment, that is, where the poor farmers are actors and reactors, benefactors as well as beneficiaries of the theory & practice of agriculture. (image of many hands raised[1] from Filo Coop)
I first came out publicly with the idea of Super Coops 7 years ago (see my essay, “The Super Coops Of 2014[2],” 30 October 2013, Nagkaisa), pleading with Senator Cynthia Villar to author a bill towards “The Village Cooperatives Act Of 2014,” amending RA 9520 and creating a new Cooperatives Management Authority. Management, after Development. For inclusive growth of villages. Nothing came out of it, but I’m not giving up on the Super Coops – or Senator Villar!
Being a wide reader, in print and online, I know that our Secretary of Agriculture William Dar is the first chief of the DA, the first knight errant brandishing not a sword but a battle plan to conquer once and for all the poverty of Filipino farmers and bring them up to the level of prosperity – and stay there!
He calls that battle plan “The New Thinking for Agriculture” with its 8 contributing battles to be won that he calls “paradigms” – Modernization, Industrialization, Promotion of exports, Consolidation of small- and medium-sized farms, Infrastructure development, Higher budget & investment, Legislative support, and Roadmap development.
I am looking at Super Coops as the mobilizer for The New Thinking from production to marketing of agricultural goods.
Overall, each Super Coop enables and ensures economies of scale in agriculture: mini, small, medium, and large operations. It not only provides the funds; it also provides the policies and procedures that must be followed by the farmer borrowers.
The Super Coop also sees to it that the new and/or improved theories and practices of Agriculture are implemented by the farmer members who borrow funds.
Not only production but harvesting, postharvest processing including warehousing, and marketing, are taken care of by the Super Coop. Absolutely no middlemen or any go-betweens are involved – the Super Coop works out contracts with institutional and/or large scale consumers all the time.
A Super Coop is the Business Manager of farmer members. They need it, as we all know farmers are still wallowing in the mud of usury without realizing it!@517
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