Linking Farmers to the Market: Toward Transforming Subsistence Farms to Commercial Farms

The Philippines is rich in natural resources such as fertile lands. However, the economic surplus generated from the use of land as the main productive agricultural resource has been sub-optimal. A key strategy is to link farmers to the market. This requires a systematic scanning of the state-of-the-art in commercial agriculture, benchmarking the farm-market linkage, and documenting best practices in domestic farm-market linkages as well as assessing market linkage interventions done in the past. This study used several research approaches including case studies, policy analysis, and household-level analysis. The results showed limited success in cases of direct market linkage assistance. For farming households, the attribute that was critical for linking to the market was whether they had subsistence- or market-oriented production. In general, they still practice subsistence farming. Further, farming household level analysis revealed that the ability to link directly to the market was influenced by the farmers entrepreneurial competency and aspirations. The results also revealed some issues with policy implications: restrictive requirements for access to financial assistance, limited value-adding, lack of locally produced value-added products available in the market, low entrepreneurial competencies, limited aspirations, and the need for convergence of government support toward linking farmers to the market.