“It’s Easy To Produce But Difficult To Market!”

The best motivation for greater productivity is profitability.
This has always been my stock answer to those who ask why farmers and fishermen do not produce enough to fill the needs of the market.
The Philippines has an abnormal marketing system where farmers and fishermen are just confined to producing with traders and middlemen handling the marketing and earring the bigger profit.
This is partly because of the fact that we have an archipelagic country where production areas are located in the many islands while the huge group of consumers is found in the big cities, including Metro Manila.
Last week, I had an interesting conversation with Rene Diago, whose wife is the daughter of an old friend and golfing mate Anthony Sasin.
Rene has several fish cages in the Panabo Mariculture Park but he said he was scaling down his production because he could hardly make any profit at a farm gate price of between P140 to P150 per kilo.
He bewailed the fact that the same Bangus bought from him and other fish cage operators at that price level is sold for no less than P250 per kilo in the market, or a mark up of P100 per kilo.
Whatever justification is offered for this disparity in profit margins between the producers and the traders, the fact remains that the farmers and fishermen take all the risk in the production.
Unless something is done fast to address this, agricultural production will slowly slump and importation will be the option.
There are three strategies to address this problem.
1. Govt. should assist farmers and fishermen in developing their marketing capabilities especially in opening outlets for their produce in the big cities;
2. Reactivate the Food Terminal Inc. and its Kadiwa Program (which is now being down by the Dept. of Agriculture) to buy and resell basic food commodities needed by Filipino families on a daily basis;
3. Local Govt. Units, like towns and provinces, should operationalize their Corporate Mandate enshrined in the Local Govt. Code and establish a marketing system where they buy the produce of farmers and fishermen and sell this in outlets in the big cities.
These strategies will protect farmers and fishermen from the exploitative marketing system in the country, assure them of greater profitability which in turn will result in higher enthusiasm to produce more.
All that is needed is a little imagination and innovation.
#GovernanceIsCommonSense!
#KungGustoMaramingParaan!