FROM THE MARGINS

The government is ramping up measures to curb inflation due to the rise in food prices resulting from shortfalls in agricultural supply. A high-level Inter-Agency Committee is being set up to monitor agricultural production, food prices, supply, and importation. This, hopefully, will fix bottlenecks in the agricultural value chain and ensure adequate food supply for our people.
To boost farm production, the government must provide adequate infrastructure, market linkages, and other support services to farmers. It also needs to promote agricultural microfinance. Lack of access to finance has been a perennial problem of our farmers.
Given limited public resources, the government should give incentives to financial institutions, especially private banks and microfinance institutions (MFIs), to promote agricultural financing.  MFIs, in particular, need to be supported because they serve the poor and marginalized, operating in rural areas that are unserved or underserved by banks. They provide loans at affordable repayment terms suited to the needs of low-income families, farmers and small landholders.

Growing seeds of hope

Many MFIs offer agricultural loans to farmers, helping them buy farm inputs and augment their income with other sources of livelihood like sari-sari stores, animal-raising, agro-processing, and other micro-enterprises. The Alalay sa Kaunlaran, Inc (ASKI ), for instance, has many innovative programs for farmers.  It provides loans, microinsurance, education, investment opportunities, and community development projects to clients.  It even has an employment program for their clients’ children.
Led by its founder and president, Rolando Victoria, ASKI has branched out into several organizations: Alalay sa Kaunlaran Microfinance Social Development, Inc.;  ASKI Mutual Benefit Association; ASKI Foundation; ASKI Multipurpose Cooperative; ASKI Skills and Knowledge Institute; ASKI Global Limited; iSynergies Inc.; ASKI School of Knowledge; ASKI Employees Credit Cooperative; and Royal Bon Voyage Travel and Tours.
From an NGO that started with a donor grant of only ₱460,000, ASKI has grown into a group of companies with ₱1.9 billion in assets. It has a loan portfolio of ₱1.8 billion, with more than 132,000 clients as of December 2022.  It has 90 branches in Regions I, II and III.
ASKI helps farmers by providing irrigation facilities, solar dryers, hanging bridges, and farm-to-market linkages.  Its Alay sa Magsasaka credit program for farmers has 25,659 beneficiaries, with a total loan portfolio of ₱382 million.

Value-chain agricultural programs

ASKI advocates the value chain model to empower communities.  One of the success stories of their Value Chain Financing Program involves the onion farmers of Nueva Ecija. ASKI helped organize the farmers into the KALASAG Farmers Producers Cooperative and linked them to Jollibee Foundation so they were assured of a steady market and a stable price for their produce. ASKI provided loans amounting to ₱13.5 million from 2009 to 2013, as well as training in financial and cooperative management.
The project helped not just the farmers’ coop; it also created jobs for the community. ASKI helped organize the farmer's wives (known as the KABIYAK or Kaagapay Sa Biyaya ng Kabukiran), as well as the out-of-school youth and hired them as onion peelers. They were paid for every kilo of peeled onions.
“The engagement of ASKI to provide production loan to KALASAG coop taught us a lot,” explains Jane Manucdoc, executive director of ASKI Microfinance. “Our learnings led to many changes in our credit operations. We even designated a full-time agro-enterprise project facilitator to help the coop.”
Jane reports that the KALASAG Cooperative is already sustainable and receiving various capacity-building programs from both government and private partners. “They are now supporting their members on their own and although they are no longer partners with ASKI, we are proud to see how much they have grown” says Jane.
The success of KALASAG gave birth to another farmers’ cooperative in San Jose City, the Onion and Vegetables Producers Cooperative (OVEPCO). Jane explains: “We assisted both KALASAG and OVEPCO through the Farmers Entrepreneurship Program of the Jollibee Foundation.” This is a collaborative effort of the Catholic Relief Services, the then National Livelihood Development Corporation with ASKI as lending conduit, the Jollibee Foundation, the City Government of San Jose, Nueva Ecija, and the Department of Agriculture. ASKI continues to assist OVEPCO up to this day, providing them with loans totalling ₱2.3 million.

Going full-blast

ASKI is intensifying its digitalization efforts for 2023.  “Digitalization makes us more efficient, especially in our field operations,” says Jane. They plan to do more agri-related community development projects, like their ongoing indigenous people’s value chain program for cassava, which directly links farmers to San Miguel Foods Corp. Their other projects include: provision of mobile water pumps to rice farmers in Aurora; bio-gas and green energy program; water, sanitation and hygiene; disaster resilient housing; infrastructure projects like drying facilities, among others.
ASKI is turning 36 this month and I wish them the best. I also hope other MFIs would emulate what it is doing. We need to support initiatives like those of ASKI, to assist our food producers. As a Polish proverb reminds us: “If the farmer is poor then so is the whole country.” (Dr. Jaime Aristotle B. Alip is a poverty eradication advocate. He is the founder of the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development Mutually-Reinforcing Institutions (CARD MRI), a group of 23 organizations that provide social development services to eight million economically-disadvantaged Filipinos and insure more than 27 million nationwide.)