MANILA: The Philippines and Japan's bid to enhance cooperation in agriculture would help address several challenges besetting the industry, including issues on logistics and food value chain, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said on Saturday.
This, after President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.'s working visit to Japan resulted in the establishment of a joint agricultural framework that will provide closer cooperation and collaboration between Tokyo and Manila, DA Undersecretary Zam Ampatuan said during the Saturday News Forum held at Dapo restaurant in Quezon City,
"This framework of joint cooperation, we can define in much clearer terms what we really needed," Ampatuan said.
"So, this framework that has been agreed in this recent visit of President Marcos can possibly address those concerns. Of course, with Japan’s vast experience as it started out as an agricultural economy and then industrialized, we can take a lot of those lessons and the advancement in technology can also be availed [of]," he added.
The issue on food value chain, Ampatuan said, is currently a "key concern" in terms of addressing food production and food losses.
He added that logistical challenges must be addressed to pool food production toward the market.
"The efficiency of our food value chain is important because that is where we really are lacking. And the only really challenge is how do we organize our farmers, how does government really put together small farm holding, how do we consolidate marketing," he said. "Japan probably can invest on those. The government has to put in the structure for how this value chain system would work. There is a need."
Ampatuan said the government has to be more aggressive in investing in agriculture, given that members of the private sector are "not as ready" to invest more in the industry as they are not "willing to take the risk."
Key interventions, especially on the enterprise systems and mechanization, are needed to help small farmers thrive, Ampatuan said.
"So, this is where we probably can address the issue on how we can put together small farms into large farms. We can probably adopt consolidation, we can probably adopt synchronized production," he said.
"On our part we should be able to also as well offer a more sustainable system, enterprise system for farmers," Ampatuan added.
Ampatuan looks forward to "more concrete steps" to improve the country's agriculture sector.
For now, he said the country is drafting a "master plan" for agricultural logistics which is expected to be released by September this year.
On Thursday, Japan and the Philippines signed seven bilateral agreements that cover cooperation in various fields, including agriculture.
Source: Philippines News Agency
