City of San Fernando, Pampanga. DAR Central Luzon Director James Arsenio Ponce, CESO III, had just sent ARB Organizations leaders and provincial point persons for the 2-day National Agro Enterprise Development ARBO Summit in San Mateo, Rizal which began on June 19.
Director Ponce said that the summit is intended to serve as a forum where knowledge exchange is enriched in the implementation of the Department’s Linking Smallholder Farmers to Market with Microfinance or LinkSFarMM Project specifically its agro-enterprise development component.
ARB organizations from the provinces of Pampanga and Tarlac are covered by the LinkSFarMM project. For Pampanga, the chairperson and bookkeeper of Porac Farmers ARB Cooperative constituted the region’s contingent.
Moreover, the manager and cluster member of Pando Farmers Agrarian Reform Cooperative of Concepcion, Tarlac beefed up the delegation as well as the chairman and cluster member of Bantog Farmers Agrarian Reform Cooperative of Tarlac City.
Lio Licup, a delegate from Pampanga and chairperson of the Porac organization, heaped praises for the substantial gains of his cooperative through the Department’s LinkSFarMM project. “With the help of DAR, we now have steady markets for our farm produce especially cassava fresh, cassava granules and pechay”, he was quoted as saying.
“It is our hope and prayer that through the microfinance strategy, additional income will continue to rise for our cooperative’s growth and development”, Licup added.
During the summit, the Porac Farmers ARB Cooperative was recognized as finalist for the Marketing Resiliency Award for recording consolidated sales of over P14-million from 2016 to 2023. (Albert Sapnu, RIO)