Planning and preparations for the approaching implementation of the PRDP Scale-Up are underway in the North Luzon cluster, as orientations are already being conducted and proposed subprojects are being validated by the Project Support Office in constant coordination with partner implementing offices across the four regions.

Some local government units at the provincial, municipal, and city levels have already been oriented on the critical points of the new flagship program of the Department of Agriculture, including its key strategic directions, project development objectives, target beneficiaries, and financing strategy for funding infrastructure and enterprise subprojects.

National Project Director, Asec. Arnel De Mesa, and Deputy Project Director Shandy Hubilla, led the presentation of the new Project’s overview during one of the meetings with LGUs in the cluster.

As presented, the PRDP Scale-Up will be a bigger, expanded version of the original project and is designed to address 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.

Moreover, the Project will highlight clustering and consolidation as a strategy, enhanced participation of the private sector, and climate resiliency of project interventions.

It is expected to directly benefit the players within the commodity value chains, including smallholder farmers and fisher groups, farmers and fishers’ cooperatives and associations (FCAs), clusters of FCAs, producers, and associations, to name a few, and the LGUs as primary project implementers.

In the Scale-Up, the LGUs will be eligible not only for infrastructure but also for enterprise investments. With this, they are encouraged to take advantage of this investment opportunity by submitting a Letter of Intent (LOI) to the Project through the concerned DA-RPCO.

Some local chief executives have already expressed their interest in participating in the Project through a request for site validation of their proposed subprojects.

The cluster’s I-BUILD Component received 264 subproject proposals, while the I-REAP Component identified 46 potential enterprise subprojects for funding under the PRDP Scale-Up.

Subproject proposals are welcome, provided that they are anchored on the Provincial Commodity Investment Plans (PCIP) and Regional Agri-Fisheries Investment Portfolio (RAFIP).

The priority infrastructure subprojects for scale-up are farm-to-market road, bridge, irrigation, potable water system, and value chain rural infrastructures, such as a slaughterhouse, tramline, and fish landing. For enterprise development, subprojects will focus on input supply/sourcing, production, post-harvest, processing, and marketing.

This new Project will be implemented from 2023 – 2029 and will provide agricultural support to 16 regions from 82 provinces in the country.