Just like in the rice industry where traders and middlemen control the buying and selling price, meat, poultry and fish products are also bought low from the farmers and sold at very high prices in the market.
The perfect example is the broiler chicken whose farm gate price plummeted from P70 per kilo to only P15 because of the Bird Flu Outbreak in Central Luzon.
Today, while the Avian Influenza problem has been fully addressed, farm gate prices of broiler are still between P30 to P40 per kilo while the selling price of dressed chicken in the market is between P120 to 130 per kilo.
It is obvious and clear who makes the killing and raking in the big profit.
On Oct. 28, the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries will launch its first direct intervention in ensuring that farmers’ get the fair price for their products and consumers are given access to affordable food items.
Undersecretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat, who handles marketing and agribusiness, will stage the third DAF TienDA Farmers and Fisher Folks Outlet, a program aimed at making available to Metro Manila consumers farm products at farm gate prices.
This time the outlet will be in the Philippine Army Camp in Fort Bonifacio and it will be called “DAF TienDA Para sa mga Bayani” and will serve mainly soldiers families.
The main feature of the Oct. 28 TienDA will be the launching of the Karne, Isda Supply Strategy Para sa Masa or KISS PM which I personally designed.
In cooperation with Sanden Philippines, a company which sells chillers, freezers, refrigerated vans and cold storage facilities, and the stakeholders of the fish and broiler industries, the DAF will offer dressed chicken, meat and fish at very low prices, much lower than in the markets of Metro Manila.
These products will be displayed in chillers to be provided by Sanden while the rest will be kept in freezers and later in stand-alone cold storage compartments which could keep up to 2 tons of the products.
From the Army Headquarters in Fort Bonifacio, the same facilities will later be set up other Commissary Outlets of the Philippine Navy, the Philippine Air Force, the Philippine National Police and in Camp Aguinaldo so that soldiers’ and policemen’s families will have access to low-priced farm products.
Depending on the reaction of the consumers, the KISS PM marketing innovation will later move to housing subdivisions and population centres through the neighbourhood Sari-Sari stores.
I believe this is the most effective way of helping our farmers get a better price for their produce while at the same time ensuring our consumers of affordable food.
(First six photos were downloaded from public websites while the last three photos show Sanden Philippines officers briefing the DAF Secretary on the chillers and freezers that they are offering to be used in the TienDA KISS PM program for Oct. 28 taken by Fathma Sulaik.)
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