A considerable challenge in getting agricultural products to its intended end users has to do with logistics. Many agricultural practitioners are of the belief that the Philippines actually grows enough food to feed itself, but the lack of accessibility between farms and markets, whether it be interisland or even just from a far-flung farm to the nearest trading post.

Many young people have been stepping up to cover this lack in the industry, one of them Henry Sison CEO, and his co-founder Ken Molina of Agro-DigitalPH.

What began as a digital platform that supported an e-commerce marketplace became a direct-to-market line between farmers and clients. And that’s just one of their projects.

“… we built a platform… that took care of forecasting, managing, and monitoring the output of smallholder farmers… The idea is still smallholder farmers, but we should be organized into cooperatives and associations.”

Thus, Agro-DigitalPH was born. This was around 2019-2020. “Everybody was in the e-commerce space, but nobody was trying to improve how production was done. So we said we need to take care of the protocols. We need to give our farmers an idea in terms of how they can project the type of production that they have.”

“We spent maybe two to three years looking for cooperatives, trying to… convince them to use the platform, until in 2021, we [realized that we] needed to come up with a proof of concept,” Sison said. This led to their partnership with grocery chain Waltermart, which continues to this day.

They started with 300 kilos of produce a week, delivered to two branches, expanding to nine, then 12, until as of mid-2024, they have been delivering to 46 out of Waltermart’s 49 branches. “From 300 kilos to… anywhere between 39 to 42 tons every week.”

The vegetables, which can be organic, natural, or conventionally farmed, depending on the demand, come from all over Luzon. The highland vegetables come from Benguet, where Agro-DigitalPH works with the Pansigedan Advocacy Coop.

Other vegetables come from Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, Cavite, and Quezon. They also supply produce to hotels and restaurants, currently around eight percent of their business.

All the farms they work with are personally vetted. “We really visit farms. We really look at their protocols,” Sison said. “We consider our farmers as customers as well.”

He joked that the business has yet to make money, but at least their partner farmers have started earning.

“It's really changing the mentality of farmers because when you talk to them about a weekly income versus a one time, big time [payday], they realize they're actually earning more if they receive orders on a weekly basis,” he explained. “So it's really life-changing… All of a sudden, they have something to look forward to every week.”

The company has also ventured into contract farming, using Agro-DigitalPH’s platform to assign and track orders. This allows them to forecast as well. “If we take a look at the map of all of our supplies, we'll understand when we can experience a glut… or [a lack], so we can act accordingly.”

That said, he admits that their system isn’t for everyone, especially if a farmer is used to the current system’s swinging prices.

Next on the pipeline is to come up with consolidation hubs in different areas, which they’ve already started in the Visayas in Iloilo and Bacolod. There are plans for hubs in Cebu, Ilocos, and La Union as well.

Sison believes that access to affordable food is a key to national security. “Affordable food. I'm not saying cheap, because when you say cheap, farmers actually end up subsidizing the food that we all eat.”

If done right, it can also cut down on food waste caused by price swings. “If you create all of these hubs across the country and they all directly work with one another, you actually save a lot of heartache in terms of violent price swings,” he said. “The nice thing about the hubs… most of them work in conjunction with LGUs.

“It's [usually] a tripartite agreement. We work with the LGU, and then with the farmers, so there’s a guarantee that local farmers would be the ones benefiting from what we're doing as a livelihood project.”

Agro-DigitalPH currently works with 16-20 cooperatives, as well as NGOs such as Negrense Volunteers for Change and Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation. “We work with everybody. The solutions are always bespoke, depending on what they want to address within the community, whether they're farmers who need assistance to reach markets, or if they're interested in understanding protocols, it’s all part of our advocacy.”

At the end of the day, Sison’s vision for the Philippines in terms of agriculture is simple: “We should stop importing. That is the dream.”