By Krystal Anjela H. Gamboa, Mhicole A. Moral, and Jomarc Angelo M. Corpuz, Special Features and Content Writers
Achieving true food security involves more than just increasing crop yields. It requires a modernized agribusiness ecosystem that protects the value of what is produced and empowers the people who produce it.
The BusinessWorld Insights forum themed “Growing Food Security Through Agribusiness,” held on June 25 at Chardonnay by Astoria, Pasig City, brought together key industry leaders, policymakers, and private sector innovators to map out a sustainable future for the country’s food systems.
The event set a stark but necessary tone regarding the state of global and local food security. Delivering the keynote address, Dr. Lionel Dabbadie, the Philippine Representative for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, emphasized that global progress remains unacceptably slow, particularly in Asia — the continent hosting the largest number of suffering individuals.
“We will not reach zero-hunger by 2030. It’s basically almost impossible. In 2024, there are still around 673 million people facing hunger all over the world,” Dr. Dabbadie remarked.
He then stressed that a continuous succession of global crises — including COVID-19, the Ukraine war, the Red Sea crisis, and the tensions in the Strait of Hormuz — persistently expose identical weaknesses, bottlenecks, and vulnerabilities within agri-food networks.
To address these issues, the forum highlighted a critical shift in how agricultural development is financed.
Historically dominated by public funding, the conversation has changed because government finance is intrinsically limited. According to Dr. Dabaddie, the central question now is: How can public finance, private capital, development finance, and farmers’ own investment work together?
For the private sector, agri-food transformation is no longer about waiting for the government to take the lead. Instead, the sector represents an immense viable investment space.
Dr. Dabbadie reminded attendees that the largest investors in agriculture and fisheries are not international financial institutions or governments, but the farmers themselves.
The ultimate challenge lies in getting public institutions, private capital, and local producers to collaborate effectively, viewing resilience not as a sunk cost, but as a protection value.
Optimizing logistics and value chains
William Dar, senior adviser for agriculture and food security of the ASEAN Business Advisory Council and former agriculture secretary, said agricultural productivity alone will not solve long-standing problems in the sector.
“The bigger challenge is ensuring that every kilogram produced reaches consumers and export markets efficiently, competitively, and profitably,” Mr. Dar noted during the first panel discussion.
He explained that many farmers already produce high-quality crops but lose income due to fragmented supply chains, expensive logistics, post-harvest losses, multiple permits, inconsistent regulations, and limited market access.
“Strengthening farm-to-market systems is necessary, meaning we need to create the simplest value chain from farm inputs, production, consolidation, processing, logistics, marketing, and export,” he emphasized. “We have the opportunity to dissect the whole farm-to-market system, and whether or not the programs and projects that we have today, both government and private, are good enough to sustain the agriculture sector.”
He added that policymakers should also examine broader structural issues affecting agriculture instead of focusing exclusively on production targets.
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Undersecretary for the Supply Chain and Logistics Mary Jean T. Pacheco said the government’s objective is to make food available, affordable, and accessible for every Filipino through a more efficient supply chain.
Improving logistics, she added, requires examining every stage of the supply chain, and each stage contributes to the overall cost of food and presents opportunities to improve efficiency.
Ms. Pacheco noted that the DTI works closely with the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Public Works and Highways, the Department of Health, and other government agencies to improve the movement of agricultural products from producers to consumers.
Infrastructure still crucial
Danilo V. Fausto, president of the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food, Inc., said the country’s geography remains one of the biggest obstacles to building an efficient agricultural supply chain.
He explained that the thousands of islands in the Philippines require transport systems that differ from those of neighboring countries with continuous land connections.
“We need to connect all islands together, not just with bridges. We advocate investing in container barges, since carrying about 100 containers on one barge is more cost-effective overall,” Mr. Fausto said.
He also pointed to the need for additional farm-to-market roads, saying many farming communities still lack reliable transport links that allow products to reach markets quickly. Transportation losses occur throughout the supply chain, from before harvest through harvesting, storage, distribution, retail, and consumption.
“Our losses of food emanate not only from post-harvest. The perishability of the product also goes to the need for cold rooms and cold storage, which is very much lacking,” he shared. “All of the chain of supply creates losses in food.”
Mr. Fausto added that more roads should support productive agricultural land rather than encourage land conversion for residential or commercial development.
“We tend to accelerate the conversion of land to housing and commercial. Then we lose agricultural land, [that’s why] we need to manage the land we have, which is limited,” he explained.
On the other hand, Ms. Pacheco emphasized that infrastructure remains one of the government’s highest priorities because efficient logistics depend on an integrated transport network. Government agencies are working together to identify priority infrastructure projects that strengthen agricultural supply chains.
However, Ms. Pacheco shared that many micro, small, and medium enterprises continue to face high operating expenses because of transportation costs and logistical inefficiencies.
“A lot of businesses are in need of infrastructure and supply chain support,” she said. “There are a lot of issues relative to what the enterprises are asking the government to look into to make the supply chain more efficient, because that involves a high cost.”
Investments toward productivity, security
Meanwhile, Mr. Dar explained that improving the ease of doing business remains necessary to encourage additional private investment in agriculture.
“If we have to succeed in new initiatives, ease of doing business is key,” he noted. “If we don’t handle that well, it will discourage the private sector from investing.”
Mr. Dar also emphasized that the agriculture sector consists largely of small farms, making it difficult for individual producers to achieve economies of scale. Therefore, the country should develop and strengthen farmer clustering and consolidation to provide practical approaches for increasing productivity.
“Once we have a collective of farmers they can leverage their partnership with the private sector. I believe that’s one evolving model: social enterprise,” he explained. “There is so much to do for small farmers. We need to scale up the investment so that the private sector can come in and partner [with them].”
Regarding food security, Ms. Pacheco said the supply chain strategy focuses on four priorities: infrastructure, investment, policy improvements across land, sea, and air transport, and workforce development. These priorities strengthen linkages between farmers, producers, buyers, retailers, and consumers while reducing logistics costs throughout the food system.
“Our goal is to make sure that the Filipino would have access to available, affordable, and accessible food,” Ms. Pacheco concluded.
Empowering production via capital and tech
Beyond physical infrastructure, modernizing the agricultural landscape requires an inclusive financial ecosystem and practical technological adoption, as the second panel discussion explored.
Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) OIC-Program Development, Monitoring, and Capacity Building Service Emily J. Guinto gives a backgrounder of her council’s duties to farmers and fisherfolk as well as their mission to increase the availability of credit for agricultural workers.
“The discussion today is no longer just about increasing the availability of credit. It is about building a stronger and more inclusive agricultural financing ecosystem. It is about building a stronger and more inclusive agricultural financing ecosystem, one that encourages innovation, supports climate resilience, promotes responsive investment, and creates opportunities across the agricultural value chain,” Ms. Guinto said.
Similarly, Metro Pacific Agro Ventures President and CEO Juan Victor I. Hernandez shares his company’s vision to become a “dairy master brand” while also highlighting the work they’ve done in advancing the greenhouse model in the Philippines.
“When you take a look at greenhouse technologies, it’s really a climate-resilient infrastructure. For us to be able to produce with less quality space but with quantity that you can actually rely on monthly, it would be a very interesting discussion on how we can impart that technology to farmers,” Mr. Hernandez said.
Meanwhile, Henry James M. Sison, Agro-DigitalPH CEO and Co-Founder, discusses how their technology and digital platform have helped small farmers and fishing communities all over the Philippines during his opening spiel.
“We have a platform that does demand capture and production management, storage and warehousing, as well as logistics, but during the time it was way ahead of its time, and it had to take a pandemic to basically get digital into the limelight,” Mr. Sison added.
Likewise, OrganicOptions President and COO Michael L. Melendres highlighted his company’s their belief that for food to be secured, it must be safe.
“We are an integrated group doing things in agriculture, ranging from farming up to the market distribution to supermarkets, and our business revolves around food safety; second to that is insecurity. We believe that for food to be secured should be clean and safe,” Mr. Melendres said.
Financing for farmers, fisherfolks
The discussion first veered towards how access to financing remains one of the biggest challenges facing the country’s agricultural sector. In this regard, Ms. Guinto outlined ACPC’s efforts to make credit more accessible while emphasizing that timely financing is often more important to farmers than low interest rates.
The ACPC is an attached agency of the Department of Agriculture that synchronizes agri-credit policies and orchestrates programs to provide small farmers and fisherfolk with sustainable financial services.
“The reason why interest rates are no longer a problem now is that farmers will avail themselves of a loan even at a high rate, and they pay as long as the credit is available to them during times that they need it the most. So timeliness is key,” Ms. Guinto explained.
She added that the ACPC currently has three ongoing programs aimed at aiding farmers and fisherfolk financially: the AgriNegosyo Loan Program, which provides zero-interest loans for small farmers and fishers (SFF) and registered micro and small agri-fishery enterprises (MSEs); the Kapital Access For Young Agripreneurs (Kaya) Program, which aims to attract the younger generation of Filipinos; and the Survival and Recovery Assistance Program, usually given out to farmers in calamity-affected areas.
Joining the discussion, Mr. Melendres emphasized that while financing remains essential, addressing agriculture’s long-standing challenges requires encouraging more farmers and fisherfolks to avail of financial plans.
“We cannot rely on the bank to simply reach out because they have rules to follow, and if we wait for that, then we will still have the same problems in the same forum 20 years from now,” he explained.
Agri’s long-term growth
Another point of conversation that the panelists discussed heavily was how transforming agriculture also requires changing how society views farmers. They argued that empowering producers, recognizing their role in food security, and fostering an entrepreneurial mindset are essential to the sector’s long-term growth.
“We need to bear in mind that farmers are our unsung heroes, because they put food on the table. Given that, we need to transform them so that they believe that they, as farmers, need to be proud of themselves and be agri-entrepreneurs,” Ms. Guinto said.
Taking a different perspective, Mr. Hernandez argued the biggest reform agriculture needs is in the mindset, saying that a change in outlook can lead to more of the youth delving in the industry along with more investments.
“I think the major reform really is that mindset that agriculture is ‘sexy.’ Agriculture is required by the Filipino economy in any mass economy around the world. Agriculture has always been a cornerstone, and there is no advanced economy in the world that doesn’t have advanced agriculture, and we’re at the cusp of that,” he said.
In a similar tone, Mr. Sison stressed that supporting local producers means creating sustainable markets for their products while encouraging responsible stewardship of the nation’s food supply.
“Farmers don’t need your pity. They need you to buy their vegetables. They need you to buy their food. Likewise, we tell our farmer partners that they have the responsibility to feed the nation. If there is a season of scarcity, please do not take advantage of that,” he expounded.
Practical innovation needed
The panelists also emphasized that innovation should be practical, scalable, and accessible to farmers. They also accentuated the importance of enabling producers to adopt and eventually own these innovations themselves.
“We think if we can get one farmer to adopt it and show the other farmers that he will be successful, I think the others will follow. And if there is a way for the private sector, like us, to work with Land Bank (of the Philippines) and the government to put that into motion. I think that’s going to be very beneficial and very impactful for at least the farmers who produce vegetables,” Mr. Hernandez said.
He added that the transition is a no-brainer, noting that Filipino farmers usually only have three cycles a year of planting vegetables in farms compared to 12 cycles in a greenhouse, as they can reap every 27 days.
Mr. Sison brought up the importance of practical innovation when catering to the digital demands of Filipino agriculture, stressing that digital solutions should directly benefit farmers and the way they earn their living.
“Digital is there, but it has to lead to certain parts of their livelihood, and that they can directly correlate it to digital pieces that we’ve introduced,” Mr. Sison said.
Expanding on this point, Mr. Sison underscored the importance of developing homegrown agricultural technologies instead of relying solely on foreign innovations.
“We cannot be consumers of technology every time. There has to be a certain degree of independence in our technology when we grow our food,” he added.
The path to a food-secure Philippines requires a synchronized effort that addresses both physical bottlenecks and financial ecosystems. As discussions at the forum demonstrated, solving the agricultural crisis demands the active integrated participation of private capital, technological innovations, and empowering farmers.
This BusinessWorld Insights forum was presented by BusinessWorld Publishing Corp., with the support of sponsor AboitizFoods; partners Asian Consulting Group, Asia Society of the Philippines, British Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, French Chamber of Commerce and Industry Philippines, Management Association of the Philippines, Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Philippine Franchise Association, Philippine Retailers Association; and media partner The Philippine STAR.
