Sustainable Smallholder Agriculture Clusters in the Philippines: why do some fail while others survive?

Abstract

The important role and contribution of smallholder farmers (SHF) in the southern Philippines towards national food security and the fabric of the nation is without question. This study identified the priorities for a SHF collective action approach for sustainable livelihood improvement. These priorities developed into the Sustainable Agricultural Cluster Framework (SACF) that included the interactions, perturbations and transformational influences to describe the SHF collective approach. Since 2010 the Philippines has enjoyed an annual economic growth of over 6% in Gross Domestic Product (GDP); however, poverty and hunger persists and in some rural regions continues to worsen. The failure of GDP benefits reaching the vulnerable poor and influencing poverty puts more importance on policies to strengthen and enhance national food and nutritional security. An increasing population, lack of infrastructure, encroachment of global marketing, decaying resources, SHFs limited knowledge of marketing and production, and Climate Change threaten the development goals of the Government of the Philippines. These structural and natural disaster threats disproportionately affect the SHFs and other vulnerable poor.Rural projects and structural adjustment programs frequently focus on financial improvement and promotion of farming practices that integrate into an economically efficient conventional food system. Whilst providing long-term benefits to the national economy these transformational programs can impose economic hardships on SHFs, or worse a permanent collapse of their local food system as they embrace the global trade of the conventional food system. The rising GDP of the Philippines shows that a sole focus on financial restructuring does not address hunger, poverty or local food security.The poor and vulnerable SHFs in the southern Philippines individually make a negligible contribution to the nation, but measured as a group, are highly significant contributors to food security, nutrition security, biodiversity, biosecurity, local culture, and local community development. SHF collective action groups, referred to as agricultural clusters, optimally comprise a group of ten to twenty SHFs collaborating in production and marketing in a local food system. There are direct SHF benefits from participating in agricultural clusters and spillover benefits that improve livelihoods and sustainability of their rural communities. Cluster organizations are unique and shaped by their members within their environments. SHFs benefit from membership of an agricultural cluster through the sharing of resources, labour, risks, and ideas that contribute to improvement in livelihood categories measured under headings of finance, social, human, natural and physical. Joining a cluster to access benefits and improve living condtions appears a rational economic decision for a SHF. This economically rational approach drives government policy and investment into agricultural clusters as a fulcrum for social formation, information transfer, and transformational change. The high failure rate of agricultural clusters suggests the SHFs hold a different view of rationality. SHFs consider an extensive range of complex and dynamic factors to make rational decisions based on their unique circumstances to bring livelihood improvements to themselves, their family, and their community. Neoclassical economic theory of their present conditions is not the basis of SHF decisions. Financial concerns incorporated and balanced against slow emergent factors or sudden shocks to livelihoods influence SHF decisions. Using a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach this study conducted in the southern Philippine islands of Mindanao, Bohol, Leyte and Samar, investigated the factors that influenced the sustainability and capacity of SHF agricultural clusters to adapt and develop within their environments. Interviews of twenty-two agriculture cluster facilitators provided insights and an understanding of general and germane issues on cluster sustainability. Subsequent sixteen Focus Group Discussions with agricultural cluster smallholder farmer members provided individual cluster and smallholder farmer perspectives. Emerging from the data was a collection of five categories important for sustainable agricultural clusters. The five data categories combined and integrated created two new frameworks on agricultural clusters. These are a Sustainable Agricultural Cluster Framework (SACF) and a Cluster Maturity Framework (CMF). Both frameworks are practical instruments for facilitator development activities and a planning tool to understand the potential mode of action of interventions. Development interventions match their needs measured using the CMF maturity-level assessment and the potential impacts of these interventions and alternatives assessed using the SACF.The results indicate smallholder agricultural clusters are sustainable when there exists a balance of identified concepts grouped under five-livelihood categories; social, human, financial, physical, and natural.