Banana Production and Cooperatives in the Philippines

The socio-economic situation of small banana growers generated a lot of issues among researchers. However, the situation drastically changed because land distribution became possible through the Collective Certificate of Land Ownership (CLOA) issuance under the CARP. CLOA is issued to cooperatives composed of agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs). The contract growing scheme was simultaneously introduced as one of the schemes in the Agribusiness Venture Arrangement (AVA) to support CARP’s implementation. Under this framework, the Individual Farming System (IFS) is introduced wherein the grower owns all bananas he produced in his assigned lot giving him high incentives in his lot’s production. Thus, the IFS is the initial step in generating self-reliant growers. The paper concludes that strengthening the cooperative’s governability is essential in attaining the sustainability of the IFS.