The tandem of presidential aspirant Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. and vice presidential candidate Sara Dutere-Carpio will breed a generation of young digital agri-entrepreneurs to help revive the country's industry if they win in the elections.
The duo came up with the plan after finding out that recent data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed a 1.7 percent rate of contraction—or an agreement between producers and buyers—in 2021's agriculture production.
"The contraction of our agriculture sector in 2021 is very problematic, and we need to act swiftly to reverse this trend," said the duo's UniTeam alliance.
"An initiative that we included in our agriculture blueprint is to encourage the participation of young digital agri-entrepreneurs or agripreneurs to introduce innovative solutions in this sector," it added.
According to the alliance, the agriculture sector "will need investments from both the public and private sectors to recover."
They said it is because sustaining the program will be a challenge due to the ongoing pandemic.
"Partnering with the private sector will help us leverage the skills and experience of Pinoy technology startups to ramp up the digitalization process," it said.
UniTeam said crop planning and supply chain management are the key areas that would greatly benefit from digitalization. This is because of the cost savings associated with higher efficiency.
Marcos Jr. and Duterte-Carpio also reiterated their commitment to establish a future-proof digital infrastructure that can handle the growing requirements of Filipinos.
"Digitalization of crop planning and supply chain would help avoid overproduction of certain crops. An improved supply chain would help our farmers avoid rotting of their products while in transit," the alliance said.
"We recognize that this push towards digitalization will be anchored on a robust infrastructure. We remain committed to achieve that for our people," it added.