The Filipino agro-food situation is rather singular in the East-Asian region, with a persistent high deficit for the major staple crops and rice in particular. There are two well known causes namely agro-climatic induced hazards (typhoons and landslides), and inefficiencies in the organization of food staple markets (lack of insights into supply and demand levels for commodities). The discussion held during the ESFIM inception workshop in February 2009 confirmed the convergence in the perception of the market constraints between the various stakeholders and the interest in and adhesion to the project for establishing a Commodity Exchange System (CES) to address these constraints. Two current priorities were identified in relation to the CES, namely improving price formation mechanism and transparency through the establishment of a Agricultural Commodity Exchange Systems (ACES), and taking stock through an assessment of past marketing support programs launched by the National Food Authority – focussing on its impact on smallholder capacity to benefit from these programs. The ongoing dialogue between the various group promoting the establishment of the CES (farmers organization, traders and agro-food companies and NFA – National Food Authority-) provide evidence of the robustness of the institutional setting in which ESFIM research support is established; farmers‘ organisations and the NFA have discussed the issue along various meetings held during the last years.
ESFIM Progress Report 2011
The ‘Support to advocacy agenda through collaborative research’ component of the ESFIM programme assists NFOs in developing countries with formulating feasible, evidence-based propositions for changes in key elements in the institutional environment that will enable effective market access for small-holders. In the annual report (ESFIM Progress report January-December 2011-En), an update of the progress of AGRINATURA research support is presented for the year 2011.
ESFIM-Philippines Policy Issues
In the last six month, the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) of the Philippines has pursued its collaboration with National Food Administration (NFA) as a member of the steering committee of the Agricultural Commodity Exchange System (ACES) pilot project. This initiative has emerged from a concerted effort and lobbying from various public and private stakeholders involved in agricultural markets and rural development. The on-going effort and commitment of the various parties involved in establishment of the ACES is remarkable, given the uncertain institutional environment induced by changes in the government administration after the presidential election. Hence, the capacity to resume ESFIM activities after the release of the required funding for the collaborative research is very timely as gives the opportunity to the FFF to strengthen its capacity in defending and supporting its view on this new institutional arrangement. Furthermore, the ESFIM collaborative research contents adjustment and review carried out in October take advantage of the lessons learnt throughout the first steps of the implementation of the ACES.
In November 2010 with the support of Agrinatura researcher the collaborative research proposal have been streamlined and focused. Hence, it aims to document, more substantially than it was initially planned, how the ACES will address directly or indirectly smallholder farmers’ positions and constraints in the Filipino corn market through a baseline survey in key corn producing areas to improve the capacity of farmers’ organizations to assess the impact of the ACES on smallholders’ corn marketing. In order to anticipate farmers’ constraints in benefiting from ACES and to maximize its impact, ESFIM funds will be allocated to the design of training tools in using ACES tailored to the needs and capacity of local farmers organization and cooperatives. The training will also target local corn traders that may improve their position on the corn market by using the ACES, improving in turn the local corn marketing situation faced by smallholders (increasing competition, more effective price incentives for quality improvement). The training component of the ESFIM collaborative project will include the design and testing of the training material on a pilot basis, while, this validated training material will be used after to upscale farmers’ capacity with other sources of fund. The last objective pursued with the ESFIM collaborative funds is to documents the whole process of the ACES establishment from the farmer organization perspective in order to take stock of specific obstacles and issues that should be consider by any other farmer organizations that would be involved in such institutional process. This objective intend to fill a gap that was noted by FFF members during the study tour organized by the NFA in Sub-Saharan Africa to visit various market organization institution in early 2010.
ESFIM-Philippines Documents
Collaborative Research documents
Manual of Operations of the Enhanced Electronic Trading System (EETS) for Corn. EETS.SOP-1
This document defines the policy and process to trade corn that is deposited in designated warehouses. Because of the mismatch of corn supply with demand in the country due to seasonalities in production, aggravated by the differences in location between corn production areas versus consumption/user areas, prices of corn fluctuate over a wide band. In this situation, the EETS for Corn appears to be a workable initiative for enabling direct transactions between buyers and small sellers at minimal cost and time lags with adequate safeguards against contract defaults.The EETS for Corn was introduced as an initial project of the government with the support of private sector towards supporting corn farmers in marketing their produce and allowing them to improve income through less marketing layers and costs. This system now provides liquidity mechanism to accredited corn farmers with NFA initially procuring deposited stocks at pre-determined price (close to market) in the meantime they are waiting for a buyer. Bids can now be transmitted electronically through the NFA’s computer system via the internet and transactions/deals are done in near real-time basis. Finally, the electronic system is more transparent and could be a credible monitor of price and market trends for use in decision-making both by the private and government sectors.
Country Proposals
ESFIM-National_Project_Proposal_-_PHILIPPINES
Workshop Reports
PHILIPPINES_Report_Workshop_ESFIM
Other Documents
esfim_philippines_preliminary_study
Philippines_esfim_paper1_revjan29
