With a population of 23,858, the Municipality of President Quirino, Sultan Kudarat, Central Mindanao is a fourth-class town and is considered the most depressed of the 12 municipalities that make-up the province of Sultan Kudarat, with almost 70 percent of its 20,858 hectares devoted to small-scale agriculture. 

Farmers in the area are able to plant and harvest all year round because of good weather. The province of Sultan Kudarat, with over 530 hectares devoted to sugarcane, ranks third in the Philippines in terms of land area devoted to muscovado sugar production. Its share of the country’s total production went up from 22 percent in 2001 to 23 percent in 2002 and 26.86 percent in 2003. 

The Local Government of President Quirino approved SB Resolution 2005-112-10 last Nov. 23, 2005 mandating the formulation of the President Quirino Muscovado Sugar Master Plan. 

The Philippine Development Assistance Programme, Inc. (PDAP) was founded in 1986 and started as a consortium of Filipino and Canadian NGOs to become an effective instrument in reducing poverty and inequity in the Philippines. 

The first of the three phases of the PDAP Program dealt with social credit, agricultural productivity, and livelihood projects. These interventions were continued until PDAP Phase II, which later on expanded to include major thematic areas such as Sustainable Agriculture and Central Loan Fund. 

Gearing on a higher phase, PDAP’s Promoting Participation in Sustainable Enterprises (PPSE) attuned its interventions on community empowerment and on scaling up of identified successful rural enterprises implemented from 1997 to 2004. 

In PDAP’s new program entitled Promoting Rural Industries and Market Enhancement (PRIME), the level of engagement with communities has moved to a higher juncture. The main objective of the program is to build and strengthen rural enterprising communities to engage the market in order to generate employment and improve the quality of life of people though their involvement in small and medium enterprises focused on organic and natural products. 

The Asia-Japan Partnership Network for Poverty Reduction (AJPN) is a consortium of national and regional NGO networks and civil society organizations working actively on various poverty reduction initiatives. It aims to promote and contribute to the reduction by half of the Asian people living in poverty by 2015 and to improve quality of life.  

AJPN thrives on the commitment of Asian and Japanese NGOs to exchange information and collaborate in implementing field-level initiatives while linking this to policy advocacy work. It promotes the use of participatory approaches in the development of site-specific interventions as perceived by the communities themselves. 

AJPN focuses its interventions on three program areas, namely: sustainable agriculture, micro finance and basic education and human resource development. 

The Sustainable Agriculture Grassroots Action Multi-Purpose Cooperative (SAGA) is an organization of development workers, members of the academe, youth, artists, scientists and technical workers supportive of and advocating for sustainable agriculture, healthy living and preservation of the environment.  

In addition to undertaking research, SAGA provides consultancy, marketing and technical services. It has initiated preliminary work for the export of organic rice and muscovado sugar. 

SAGA believes that sustainable agriculture is a viable alternative for resource-poor farmers and is a mechanism in addressing poverty and inequity. 

Philippines 
March 2006 

This study was Undertaken by the Sustainable Agriculture Grassroots Action Multi-purpose Cooperative