WEF’s Grow Asia scheme taps DA program to boost farm sector aid

DAVOS IN ASIA President Aquino addresses the 23rd World Economic Forum on East Asia at the Shangri-la Hotel in Makati City. MALACAÑANG PHOTO/RYAN LIM

The World Economic Forum, through its newly launched international collaboration platform dubbed Grow Asia, is tapping the Department of Agriculture-supervised Philippine Rural Development Program (PRDP) as a regional channel investments that would help mainly smallholding farmers.

Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala said in an interview that officials of Grow Asia “were impressed with PRDP, which is something they have never seen anywhere else” in the region.

“The Philippines has had great exposure [because of our hosting the WEF for East Asia] and we need to capitalize on that,” Alcala said.

“I believe we can advance (competitively) because our rural initiative is unique in how it involves the locals, the beneficiaries,” he added. “In fact, they want to learn from us.”

The WEF is launching this year similar initiatives for the three previous host of the annual East Asia fora—Vietnam, Indonesia and Myanmar.

These initiatives would serve as “a regional platform [meant] to facilitate multi-stakeholder partnership for sustainable and inclusive agricultural growth” and which build on existing domestic programs.

These are Vietnam’s Public-Private Task Force on Sustainable Agriculture, Partnership for Indonesia’s Sustainable Agriculture, and the Myanmar Agriculture Network.

As for the Philippines, such regional platform is likely to build on the PRDP, which is a P27-billion program backed by the World Bank and is a scale-up of the Mindanao Rural Development Program.

At this early, Alcala said there are already interested investors that are looking at opportunities in the Philippine agricultural sector.

He said one such party is a group of companies led by the Widjaja family, which is engaged in the palm oil business, among other projects.

“They are looking for contract-growing opportunities for two [palm oil farm] clusters of 20,000 hectares each,” Alcala said.

Aside from that, the agricultural chief said a South Korean group is looking at the possibility of setting up a corn-based animal feed manufacturing operation in Philippines.

“We have arranged follow on meetings [with Grow Asia and the companies] to move things forward,” Alcala said.

Last week, Alcala said the government is ready to work with Grow Asia and be an active partner in crafting and pushing for new, out-of-the-box solutions to helping farmers and fishers produce enough food despite climate change and other challenges.