The case for attaining economies of scale at the farming level was the central theme of the first session of the panel presentations. Dean Arlene Inocencio of the School of Economics at De La Salle University argued that scale in food and agribusiness is both structural and necessary, as it drives efficiency, investment capacity, and bargaining power. She pointed out that the primary constraint to improving productivity in Philippine agriculture is farm fragmentation. This fragmentation hinders mechanization and forces farmers to remain "price takers" in buyer-dominated markets.

Dr. Inocencio clarified that scale is more about organization than sheer land size; corporate farms and land consolidation are not strictly necessary as long as there are shared services, collective selling, and bundled finance. She identified three pathways for progress: horizontal consolidation (cooperatives), vertical consolidation (transparent contract farming), and hybrid models (mechanization hubs and digital platforms). Ultimately, productivity is an outcome of an appropriate value chain, while market power is attained through institution-building to ensure fairer negotiations.

Dr. Lionel Dabbadie, Country Director, reframed “competing at scale” as a matter of collective organization and economic coordination rather than simply having larger farms. He noted that while smallholders (those with under two hectares) operate only 12 percent of global hectarage, they produce one-third of the world’s food supply, making them essential to global food security. Dr. Dabbadie supports the Farm and Fisheries Clustering and Consolidation (F2C2) program, which shifts farmers and fisherfolk from individual production units to collective economic actors. As strategic levers, he emphasized sustainable mechanization (shared equipment hubs) and digital tools (such as AI-supported forecasting) as accelerators that reduce the transaction costs of collective action. As a safeguard, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) promotes “scale with safeguards,” ensuring that scaling does not undermine tenure security or exclude vulnerable groups, such as Indigenous Peoples (IP).

I fully agree with the distinction between scale and land size. However, the "fly in the ointment" is the notoriety of Filipinos in general—not just farmers and fisherfolk—for their inability to cooperate with one another. Unlike many of our neighbors who have cultures that foster cooperation (e.g., the Japanese and those heavily influenced by Confucian culture), cooperatives in the Philippines are more known for failure than success, especially among farmers.

That is why a more practical approach is the nucleus estate model used by the Malaysians. In this setup, a farmer does not have to belong to a cooperative; instead, they can lease their small farm to a large corporation. The lessee then consolidates these small farms into large units managed according to the Del Monte or Dole models used for bananas and pineapples in Mindanao. It is no coincidence that the nucleus estate approach worked better in Malaysia; their Malay farmers, like Filipinos, have not been influenced by Confucian culture and are not as naturally prone to cooperativism as their Chinese counterparts.

Former Agriculture Secretary William Dar highlighted the urgency of clustering due to the shrinking average size of Philippine farms, which fell from 3 hectares in the 1980s to just 0.9 hectares in 2012. I would add to this the fact that the average age of a Filipino farmer is already close to 60 years.

Secretary Dar posited that clustering, in one form or another, is the future of Philippine farming, transforming fragmented lots into community business enterprises or large commercial farms. He referred to the "Big Brother" model, also known as the KALAP program, through which large agribusiness enterprises provide mentorship, technology, and market access to smallholder clusters. Where socially feasible, clustering reduces unit costs through bulk purchasing and shared post-harvest facilities, making farmers "bankable" and reliable suppliers for institutional buyers. He outlined a 36-month implementation plan to move from plot clusters to competitive value chains through public-private-producer partnerships.

Finally, Dr. Nerlita Manalili, Managing Director of Nexus Agribusiness Solutions, defined scaling as the strategic growth of capacity in operations, people, and technology. She echoed the advantages of scaling identified by previous speakers but distinguished between, integration across suppliers and retailers as well as Diversification into value-added products and geographic expansion.

For small players, scale is achieved through farm clustering and partnerships for high-value or organic products to reach premium export markets—such as processing locally produced cacao beans into high-value chocolates. Successful scaling requires an enabling policy environment, data-driven management (monitoring, evaluation, and learning), and strong social capital built on trust and coordination.