MANILA -- Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary Emmanuel Piñol is proposing a tie-up between the agriculture department and the Quezon City (QC) government in establishing marketplaces called TienDA outlets in the city, where farmers can directly sell their produce to consumers at lower prices.
Piñol said under the target tie-up, the city government would identify areas where the DA could put up TienDA outlets that women's groups could operate without middlemen.
Piñol said the DA and the QC government are finalizing details of a planned memorandum of agreement.
“We can first establish TienDA outlets in QC’s marginalized areas,” Piñol said in a media conference in Barangay Payatas, a poor village, on Monday.
Prioritizing marginalized areas as TienDA sites is in line with the administration’s campaign to make affordable food available to the
public, he noted.
Even a few pesos' savings per purchase at TienDA outlets would help people in these areas make ends meet, he continued.
The DA and QC government launched the first rolling TienDA outlet in Payatas on Monday.
Piñol explained it is called "rolling", since the outlet has no permanent location yet.
The DA launched its TienDA initiative last year in Metro Manila, noting middlemen's inclusion in the marketing chain is raising prices of
agricultural produce.
Factored into such prices are middlemen's fees, the DA noted. "Through TienDA, however, we want to prove that food need not be expensive," said Piñol.
He said TienDA sells commercial rice at PHP38 per kilogram, which is lower than the prices in regular markets.
"I think that's already a fair price for rice sold in Metro Manila," he said, adding TienDA outlets outside Metro Manila might even sell rice at slightly lower prices.
Aside from rice, commodities sold at the TienDA in Payatas are salted eggs, chicharon, and other food items. The DA aims to make QC one of its LGU partners on TienDA.
"We have very good relations with Quezon City," Piñol said, mentioning the provincial government of Negros Occidental had earlier agreed to have a TienDA outlet in Bago City.
"Farmers can bring their harvest to the rice processing complex in Bago City and afterward sell their rice in the TienDA there," he said.
He added that more TienDA outlets should be put up in more local government units nationwide to give more Filipinos easier access to the staple food. (PNA)
