BATAAN Rep. Geraldine Roman has filed a bill seeking to establish Kadiwa stores in every province to enable farmers to earn from their harvests without passing the burden of high costs to consumers.
Under House Bill No. 5601, or the proposed “Magna Carta for Agricultural Workers and Revitalized Agriculture Value Chain of 2022,” Kadiwa is institutionalized as the government arm to buy directly from agricultural workers, “ensuring a rate of return that would allow them to live comfortably and still have the possession to engage in a revitalized agriculture value chain.”
“What we experienced during the pandemic should be a lesson learned in terms of logistics and supply chain planning,” the bill said. “The value chain addresses supply chain gaps within the agriculture industry and develops an alternative market for domestically produced agricultural goods completely dedicated to maximizing the economic benefit of both producers and consumers.”
The Marcos administration has relaunched the Kadiwa program to enable the public to buy agricultural products at lower prices in the face of higher inflation.
The “Kadiwa ng Pasko,” which is an initiative of President Marcos, Jr., who is the concurrent agriculture secretary, allows farmers, fishermen, and microentrepreneurs to sell their products directly to the public.
Roman said expanding the scope of the Kadiwa store project will be good for both farmers and consumers.
Under the bill, the Department of Agriculture (DA) shall collect the produce directly from the registered agricultural workers and place the products in the provincial food terminal in coordination with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
The DTI is tasked to “manage the procurement and sale of produce from registered agricultural workers and ensure the long-term sustainability of the program.”
The proposed law mandates the DA “to allocate funds in purchasing agricultural products from registered agricultural workers at a competitive price and transport and distribute these agricultural products to the provincial food terminals and sell them through Kadiwa centers to consumers, in compliance with the DTI’s Suggested Retail Price (SRP) program.”
“DTI shall purchase produce from agricultural workers at subsidized prices through negotiated government contracts in order to provide direct support to them and reduce the risks involved in agriculture. There shall be a Kadiwa store in designated local government units who shall be serviced by provincial food terminals in the respective areas nationwide,” the bill said.
The measure also seeks to set up an infrastructure map “by providing resilience in case the supply chain is compromised by natural or man-made calamities.”
“We need to transform agriculture to a sustainable and diversified sector to ensure economic recovery, reduction of poverty, and food security,” Roman said.
