THE Department of Agrarian Reform and the local government unit (LGU) of Aleosan, North Cotabato, have formalized ties to boost the income of coconut farmers through a collective market scheme.
Under the “Linking Smallholder Farmers into Market with Microfinance,” or LinkSFarMM, project, the DAR and LGU of Aleosan will organize hundreds of coconut farmers to build a strong and reliable cluster of coconut farmers that would serve as potential suppliers in the collective marketing business of their coconut products.
Around 700 hectares of coconut farms are expected to be grouped into different clusters as part of the project.
Provincial LinkSFarMM Project Point Person Carylmark C. Bajao said during the recent cluster leaders’ training, that organizing farmers into clusters would give them greater opportunities in finding institutional buyers and higher prices for their copra, whole nuts, and other coconut products.
LinkSFarMM is an innovative program of the DAR to make smallholder farmers increase agricultural productivity and effectively manage their agricultural production by applying a value chain process.
Aleosan Municipal Agriculturist Jimmy Basas said they are expecting more or less a thousand coconut farmers to be involved in the collective marketing scheme.
“We are amazed at the outcome of the LinkSFarMM project implemented by the DAR and we have also seen the impact in the lives of the cardava banana farmers in Aleosan which propelled us in replicating the technology to our coconut farmers,” Basas said.
The municipality of Aleosan is the first LGU in North Cotabato to replicate the DAR-LinkSFarMM project after the successful implementation of collective marketing on cardava banana handled by the New Leon Multi-purpose Cooperative, a DAR-assisted organization.