The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), in partnership with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), implemented the project "Convergence on Value Chain Enhancement for Rural Growth and Empowerment" or Project ConVERGE with the goal of empowering Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries...

Linking small farmers to modern markets, whether domestically or for export, increasingly entails participation in modern supply chains coordinated by contract farming. Concerns have been raised regarding the possible disadvantages from contract farming facing small farmers. Most empirical work...

Recently, the agricultural sector in the Philippines has enjoyed robust growth driven by rapid price increases in key subsectors, namely, rubber, sugarcane, and coconut. The largest subsectors, however, namely, rice and corn, relatively experienced slower growth and exhibited lower...

The agriculture and fisheries sector has been expanding over time, albeit within the overall context of structural change in the Philippine economy. However, based on progress made in other similarly situated economies, growth and productivity trends have not been "on track." While considerable...

The objective of this paper is to evaluate how Agrarian Reform Beneficiary Organizations (or ARBOs) participate in the value chain; how they engage actors along the value chain and what challenges do they face in the process. Farmer organizations, such as ARBOs, are important conduits for...

Cognizant of the value and contribution, as well as of the challenges in the agricultural finance, the government has intensified its lending programs designed to help the agricultural sector, specifically, the smallholders. Thus, affordable and easy access retail lending has intensified in...

This study examines the public-private-producers partnership (4Ps) model for agriculture value chain development implemented through Project ConVERGE of the Department of Agrarian reform. The model adopted a cluster approach whereby farmers groups are organized into clusters to coordinate their...