THE Department of Agriculture (DA)-Northern Mindanao, in partnership with the region's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI), has launched the Agribusiness Support for Promotion and Investment to Regional Exposition (Aspire) in SM City Cagayan de Oro Uptown.
The event, which will run from September 28 to 30, aims to promote the commodities of farmers, fisherfolk, producers and processors of Northern Mindanao, and to link them directly to the buyers and potential investors.
"This is an event that we're helping the farmers promote and sell their products directly to the consumers and they can also learn, see what are the preference, what are the innovations needed by showcasing their products," Chedy Ansale, chief of the Agribusiness and Marketing Assistance Division of DA-Northern Mindanao, said.
"We are converging or integrating all the services, not only the trade fair but also some other activities like the capability enhancement, investment forum, market matching, business to business and many others," she added.
Around 30 exhibitors have gathered to showcase their fresh fruits and vegetables, processed food, herbal products and fertilizers to the consumers living in the uptown area, which, according to Ansale, are their target market.
"We decided that this will be held in SM Uptown because the target consumers are here. This place, there are high-end subdivisions around if you could see, mga high end, and they are our target consumer buyers," Ansale said.
"We observed that in other places, people are coming or going there just to see and not to buy. But here in this place, most often the shoppers really buy the products, especially if they saw that these are the products of the farmers themselves," she added.
Project Aspire has four driving components, namely: production support, enterprise development and industry support, investment promotion, and market promotion and development.
According to Ansale, the event can also help the farmers and fisherfolk increase their income, saying that they are expecting to generate around P4 million for this event, as the past trade fairs, such as the Agri-Aqua Trade Fair, showed a record of over a million peso income produced.
“We're expecting to have more, like P4 million, because we are inviting mga investors that they will invest our priority commodities such as the coffee, cacao. If you could see both, there are different products or innovations in presenting the value adding of cacao and coffee. That's one way of promoting products,” Ansale said.
“And also buyers tend to book products or they wanted to buy the products of the exhibitors who are here right now,” she added.
The overall objective of the project is to support farmers to become successful agri-entrepreneurs. The DA said that they hope to transform more farmers and fisherfolk into more competitive agripreneurs.