Date Published: March 17, 2023

As the Mindanao Cluster gears up for its new project, PRDP National Deputy Project Director Shandy M. Hubilla gave an orientation on the PRDP Scale-up during their coordination meeting on March 7, 2023 at the Grand Regal Hotel in Davao City.

In his presentation, DPD Hubilla talked about the strategic directions of the PRDP Scale-UP, its development objectives, target beneficiaries and partners as well as the different components of the Project.

“The PRDP Scale-up is one of the new flagship programs of DA-PRDP with an expanded scope on clustering and consolidation strategies, and productive partnership with Farmer Cooperatives and Associations (FCAs) or cluster FCAs and the private sector for value-adding and increased market access,” said DPD Hubilla. “The project will also highlight climate resilience as a common feature across interventions. It will also establish scaled-up enterprise investments to include small to large-scale enterprises as common service facilities.”

The priority projects under the scale-up of I-BUILD component will be farm-to-market roads, bridge, irrigation systems, potable water supply level II, and value chain rural infrastructure.

For the I-REAP, the bulk of support will be on input supply/ sourcing, production, consolidation, postharvest support, processing, and marketing.

PRDP Scale-up’s new strategic directions will focus on rebuilding the food value chain by improving efficiency in the supply chain and by achieving a regional perspective in coming up with key agri-fishery investment areas as well as clustering and consolidation of farmer and fisher associations, enhanced mainstreaming of PRDP innovations by institutionalizing it in DA, respond to rural infrastructure demand with FMRs, and partnership of FCAs with the private sector for productive alliances and co-management agreement of enterprise facilities.

With this new fund support, DA-PRDP will continue its commitment in addressing the gaps in the commodity value chains by improving the efficiency of the food supply chain towards greater connectivity, mobility, accessibility, availability, and affordability of food in the market. (via Joy Montecalvo, PSO Mindanao | Photo by Leonard Asuque, PSO Mindanao)