To ensure food security and to increase income among farmers, fisherfolks, and other stakeholders, the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist in the Province of Zamboanga del Norte (ZaNorte) has developed agricultural communities capable of producing competitive products. This project is called eGBU or the Enhanced Gasang Bahandianon sa Umahan.
The eGBU aims to improve the living conditions of poor and marginalized farmers by providing them with new farming technologies and empowering them to become productive citizens by operating micro, small, and medium-sized businesses to achieve long-term income and livelihood. It specifically aims to Develop 240 Communal Farm Facilities (CFF) on either crop, animal, and fishery and provide starter kits for its initial community production; provide individual farmer members with 10 seedlings of coffee and cacao and 10 assorted fruit tree seedlings to provide them the opportunity to diversify their owned farms; extensively disseminate animal production through community-based dispersal scheme out from the CFF production, and develop province-based multiplier farm as a source of high-quality animal stocks.
Moreover, it also assist farmers' organizations in marketing their products through establishing marketing assistance mechanisms in promoting efficient marketing schemes; establishing strong alliances and convergence with NGAs and LGUs to fight against poverty, unemployment, food insufficiency, and peace conflict for responsive delivery of basic services; establish one organized farming community per barangay compliant to the program requirements to qualify as a legitimate beneficiary of the program; and organize women and farm youths to capacitate them on value-adding, processing, and marketing.
The GBU is enhanced to cover all barangay in the province. It aims to reach out to 240 barangays per year and it specifically targets the beneficiaries such as farmer associations preferably registered organizations, the poorest of the poor farmers including those landless farmers, and those farmers affected by peace conflict. The formation of the community-based organizations was facilitated by Community Organizers (COs) assigned in different Local Government Units (LGUs). As of 2021, there is a total of 527 barangays covered, 592 organizations organized with 20, 494 association members in the entire province.
On the other hand, Dapitan City topped in the ranking of performing LGUs in terms of social preparation reaching 96% (48/50) of the total barangays in the city that were already organized and have established eGBU communities. Sindangan took the second place with 38 barangays and the Municipality of Sergio Osmeña with 35 barangays on the third spot, respectively. As the year 2021 concluded, eGBU was able to federate farmer-recipient associations by 48% among 25 municipalities and 2 cities, with 305 participating associations and 5,820 farmer households.
The eGBU is spearheaded by the Provincial Governor and Provincial Nutrition Committee Chair of ZaNorte Hon. Roberto Uy. The eGBU Organizational Structure is being formed and created to give more clarity to the management and workforce of the program, to help managed expectations, and to enable better decision-making as well as to provide consistency. Assignment of responsibilities and organizational workflow were clearly stated to ensure effective delivery of the different tasks on time. Kudos ZaNorte!
- PNFP Rowence F. Zorilla, RND
