“Those Fundamentals” – PH Agriculture Can Take A Cue From Monetary Board Member!

V Bruce J Tolentino et al have just authored a book co-published by the Department of Agriculture (DA) with its attached agency, the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) – which has just inspired me with a concept, as intimated in my title above.

The book is titled Enabling Rural And Agricultural Finance For Inclusive Development In The Philippines, published August 2021 (264 pages, available in pdf) – the above multiple images comprise the book cover.

In her Preface to the book, Jocelyn Alma R Badiola, currently ACPC Executive Director, reminds the reader that the ACPC was created in 1986 through Executive Order 113, “to synchronize all credit policies and programs in support of the (DA’s) priority programs.” Thus, the ACPC was “given the responsibility of reviewing and evaluating the economic soundness of all ongoing and proposed agricultural credit programs, whether for domestic or foreign funding, prior to approval.”

Leading the first efforts then was the now-main author of the book, Mr Tolentino, who was appointed as the first ACPC Executive Director by then-Secretary of Agriculture Carlos G Dominguez III. Ms Jocelyn says:

Today, the ACPC remains the country’s premier government institution for program development and research on agrifishery credit – a feat that would not have been possible without the expertise and dedication of our first Executive Director, whose vision of a sustainable rural finance system for farmers and fisherfolk served as the guiding principle of the Council.

As an editor of many books published here and abroad, I was thinking that the contents of this book must be out of date because they were published many years ago. And then I read, in his own Introduction to Book 1, where Mr Tolentino is saying:

A key insight gleaned from my time in Mindanao, at the ACPC, abroad, and in the Philippines – and which is now clearer than ever from my vantage point at the Monetary Board of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) – is that… the (farming) fundamentals must be attended to, and those fundamentals include good seeds, the right germplasm, proper irrigation, wise plant management… All of these ingredients enable productive and profitable agriculture, which is necessary for a borrower to be deemed credit-worthy and (the) project viable for bank financing.

Listening to this member of the Monetary Board of BSP saying, “The fundamentals must be attended to…” gave me the idea: “Why not multipurpose cooperatives as loan managers for farmers?”

Consequently: The ACPC entitles each PH coop to, say, P100 million every year, depending on need. The coop requires that a farmer be a bonafide coop member before s/he can borrow – and must attend a month-long virtual training course in the use of funds – along with the proper crop & livestock operations – to enable the farmer to profit from the loan, as “the fundamentals must be attended to, and those fundamentals include good seeds, the right germplasm, proper irrigation, wise plant management.”

With such coop-managed ACPC loans singling out such farming essentials, PH Agriculture will advance, and farmers will rise from poor to welcome lives!@517