ACTUALLY, the family farms idea is not entirely new.
Family farms have existed in the Philippines for a long time now, including the one built and operated by my late father in Compostela Valley many years ago.
However, there is clearly no legal basis for the idea to be recognized, and for family farm owners and operators to avail of incentives, benefits and other forms of assistance.
This idea might be a big one as others may have seen it, but what is equally big is the idea that groups of family farms could actually form cooperatives among themselves. This other idea comes with an entirely new dimension, that farmer cooperatives should be composed of collective family farms, and not of individual farmers.
There is actually another dimension here, and that is the idea that clusters of farmer cooperatives could practically become newly formed communities or newly strengthened communities if they are already existing, purposely given the status of being incentivized economic zones.
A few years ago, in an exchange of email messages, I reasoned with Mr. Danny Ang that we should use the term “farming cooperatives”, and not “farmer’s cooperatives”. Mr. Ang was the Secretary-General of the Philippine Cooperative Center (PCC), one of the larger cooperative groups that expressed an interest in moving forward with the family farms idea.
After studying the idea further, I now agree with Mr. Ang that the proper term should be “farmer’s cooperatives” because it is more people oriented, just like consumer’s cooperatives, driver’s cooperatives and homeowner’s cooperatives.
This is actually just a matter of technicality, because the family farms as I have proposed to define it are really composed of individual farmers who just happen to be family members also.
The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in the Philippines might have been formed with good intentions, but it is clearly lacking in good support mechanisms. For example, it may be comprehensive in scope, but it is clearly not comprehensive in terms of depth. While it is often said that Agrarian Reform Communities (ARCs) are lacking in post-harvest facilities, nobody seems to notice that these are also lacking in many other farm supports that are needed in achieving good harvests.
It is already moot and academic by now, but the parcels of land that were given to the CARP beneficiaries are actually too small for them to achieve the economies of scale that are needed to have financially viable farming operations. I am not saying that these parcels should be increased. What I am saying is that some forms of cooperation should be introduced in order to achieve the economies of scale, and that could only happen under the cooperative approach.
Not that I am exaggerating, but I really believe that whatever shortcomings there are under CARP, there are still ways to cure these under the legal framework of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA).
If and when declared and recognized as incentivized economic zones, all the ARCs and all the newly formed communities or newly strengthened communities under the family farms idea could grow and prosper. In order to have a visual picture of what to expect in an agro-industrial economic zone, just imagine that there would be four sub-zones, one each for production, processing, manufacturing and shipping.
Production could be a mix of fruits, vegetables, poultry and livestock, root crops plus fish and other marine life. Processing could just be a stage for packaging of fresh products, or it could also be for preparing raw materials for manufacturing. (To be continued/PN)
