Agriculture
(DA); Dir. Glen Panganiban, Director of High
Value Crops Development Program of the DA;
Rowena Sadicon, President of Philippine Rice
Industry Stakeholders
Movement; Kais Marzouki, Chairman and
CEO ofNestlé Philippines; Christian Moeller,CEO and Co-Founder
of Lionheart Farms; Michael Tan, President
of LT Group, Inc.; Irwin
Ang, Senior Vice President for Growing Operations of Universal
Leaf Philippines Inc.;-
Michelle Gankee, Exec.
Vice President of SL Agritech – Sterling Group of
Companies; Dr. William
Dar, Senior Adviser of
Go Negosyo for Kapatid Angat Lahat Agri
Program (KALAP); Joey
Concepcion, Founder ofGo Negosyo; President
Ferdinand Marcos Jr.,
President of the Republic of the Philippines;
Simon Bakker, CEO of
Kennemer Foods International;James Amparo, CEO of Yovel East
Agriventures; Fernando
Cojuangco, President
& COO of Central Azucarera De Tarlac; Jovy
Hernandez, President
and CEO of Metro Pacific Agro Ventures; Carl
Benedick Chung, SVP
of Bounty Group; Stephanie Nicole Sarmiento-Garcia, Executive
Vice President of Vitarich Corporation; Admin.
Belinda Sarmiento-Sanchez, Administrator and
CEO of National Tobacco Administration;-
Commissioner Gaspar
Cayat, Commissioner
of National Commission
on Indigenous Peoples;
and Atty. Lucius JunJun Malsi, OIC Administrator and Deputy Admin
of Philippine Coconut
Authority.PR
MANILA, April
27, 2023] – President
Ferdinand Marcos Jr. met
with Go Negosyo founder
Joey Concepcion at the
Malacañang Palace, as
Concepcion led the group
of big-brother agriculture
companies and relevant
government agencies last
April 25 to deliver an update on KALAP, or Kapatid
Angat Lahat Agri Program.
This is the second KALAP
meeting with the President after the program’s
ceremonial signing with
government agencies last
March 6.
Among the issues brought up during the
meeting was the need for
interventions in ensuring
that farmers get access to
credit – an issue that was
the result of earlier consultations with banks and
financial institutions on agriculture lending.
During the meeting, Concepcion emphasized the importance of
achieving scale. “KALAP
needs scale. The five
hectares that the small
farmers have now is not
competitive. At the same
time, banks can’t lend to
them because the lands
cannot be collateralized
per agrarian reform law.
While right now, there
are workarounds by the
big-brother companies asthey work with groups of
small farmers, we need
to think about longer term
solutions,” he said later in
an interview.
The President,
for his part, assured the
group during the meeting
that he will look into each
industry concern in detail
separately, adding that
Landbank and the Development Bank of the Philippines are expanding their
credit program coverages
to agriculture. He further
said he will look into the
use of digitalization in farm
management as started by
Universal Leaf Philippines
(ULPI) in the tobacco industry. ULPI’s Winston Uy
shared during the meeting
the technology they use in
tobacco farming, and his
intention to share it with
other big-brother companies as one of the tools
they can use under KALAP.
Other big-brother
companies also presented
to the President their models that can be used for
KALAP. In addition to Uy,
there was James Amparo,
who shared Yovel East’s
model for rice farming,
Christian Moeller for coconut, Simon Bakker for
cacao, Kais Marzouki for
coffee, and Nando Cojuangco for sugar
Since its signinglast March, KALAP has
enticed more big agriculture companies to join
the program. Banks and
financial institutions similarly expressed support for
KALAP’s push for easier
access to credit for small
farmers. The Go Negosyo
program aims to transform
Philippine agriculture and
create jobs by focusing
on major agricultural commodities, adopting inclusive business models, and
creating an enabling business environment.
“There has been
a lot of interest, especially
among the big companies
on how they can participate in KALAP. There is
still plenty of room for solutions and we are open to
seeing how we can work
with more big-brother
companies,” said Concepcion.
KALAP aims to
give farmers access to
money, markets and mentorship, the three M’s that
make for successful enterprises. “With KALAP, we
aim to see transformed
agricultural commodities,
food security, job opportunities, and an industry that
is able to meet the requirements of the market, both
in quality and quantity,”
said Concepcion.
The private meeting at the Palace included
the heads of the agri companies who, under the KALAP model, will share their
inclusive business models
that integrate small farmers into the value chain
of large corporations. Key
government agencies,
meanwhile, will help facilitate the environment to
create a productive, profitable, sustainable and
competitive agriculture industry. PR
