Former Department of Agriculture (DA) secretary William Dar has joined Go Negosyo's Kapatid Angat Lahat program, an initiative that aims to encourage medium and large corporations to help micro and small enterprises by including them in their value chain.
Dar is serving as the head of the organization's agriculture program, given his expertise in agriculture and food production. Dar is a pioneer director of the Philippine Bureau for Agricultural Research and the executive director of the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic, and Natural Resources Research and Development.
Dar will work alongside Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) chief Benhur Abalos, Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion said.
"The experience and expertise of former Secretary Dar and Secretary Abalos will be of great help in finding solutions to how we can uplift our micro-farmers," added Concepcion, who recently presided over a meeting that brought together Dar, National Irrigation Administration chief and former Piddig Mayor Eddie Guillen, Universal Leaf Phils. (ULP) President Winston Uy, and Lionheart Farms CEO and Co-Founder Christian Eyde Moeller for a meeting that aims to tackle the role of local government units in encouraging agri-microentrepreneurship.
"I would like to believe that there are existing models to improve upon," Dar said in his remark, "Now, with the coming in of Go Negosyo through the Kapatid Angat Lahat program for agro-microentrepreneurship, we need to elevate these models by way of looking at them through a number of lenses."
In tapping former and current government officials, Concepcion said their programs cannot be done by the private sector alone. He said they need to work with the local government units and their leadership as "together we must provide an enabling environment that can help our country’s micro-farmers grow and become entrepreneur."
Among the program's first approaches would be to focus on four key crops, namely rice, coconut, corn and tobacco.
Uplifting the agriculture sector is seen as especially crucial to job generation, Concepcion believed. That was a key priority of the Marcos administration and the jobs sector led by Concepcion as a member of the Private Sector Advisory Council.
"More than 62 percent of the jobs generated in the Philippines come from MSMEs (micro, small, medium enterprises), and a big part of these MSMEs come from the agriculture sector," Concepcion said.
He said most of the challenges among these MSMEs are in the agriculture sector, particularly those operating at the smallest scale, or the micro-farmers.
"We will aim to scale up our micro-farmers so they can become entrepreneurs, help them grow from micro to small, small to medium, and in the process, create more jobs for Filipinos, especially in the countryside," he said. Beyond agriculture, Kapatid Angat Lahat will also have programs that will cover other sectors, including retail, where many micro-entrepreneurs can be found.