Cooperatives: In union there is strength

My adventurousness and occasional volunteer work has exposed me to different kinds of cooperatives; some successful and others failures.

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It is hard to believe, but in the poor province of Negros Oriental, there are no less than two credit cooperatives worth over a billion. Another poor province, Leyte, also has two such billionaire credit coops. During the last century, a farmer-owned cooperative in Cavite won over the majority of the market for animal feeds in Southern Luzon from corporate giant San Miguel. When the farmers wanted to increase their incomes by going into poultry and pig raising, they also decided to produce their own feeds as the agricultural technicians were required to endorse the choice of suppliers of feeds and fertilizers to rural bank borrowers. There was a tendency for some suppliers to deliver adulterated products.

The three biggest cooperatives in asset size in the world are owned by farmers. Two are in France and one in Japan. In the Philippines, the biggest coops are worker-related: two credit coops in the military and one among employees of PLDT, the privately owned phone company.

There are over 20,000 coops registered with the Cooperatives Development Authority (CDA) in the Philippines. The CDA is currently supervised by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). It had earlier been part of the Department of Agriculture, and later with the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

As I am always trying to find ways that the government can reduce poverty in our country, I sat down with Edgar Comeros, one of a few activist experts in mobilizing and helping to strengthen cooperatives in our country.