Information Hub – Reaching organic farmers directly with information and technologies useful to them through proper communication media.
Direct Link Between Scientists and Farmers – Building strong partnerships with relevant sectors, like youth, academe, government, non-government organizations and private practitioners.
Venue for Grounding of Research- Learning together in conducting participatory research, validating farmers’ practices and developing technologies that would impact positively to bridging the gap in issues like poverty reduction and food security amidst climate change and synthetic chemical farming.
Advocacy Group for Organic Agriculture – promoting science-based quality standards, regulations, incentives and critical programs on capacity building, knowledge management, entrepreneurship, continuing strategic research and development activities and facilities.
Knowledge Mine. The NICE Platform, in partnership with the RDIs and SUCs, will be populated with lists of and details on sustainable agricultural researches ready for disclosure. In this manner, we seek to bring the completed researches to wider audience with the hope that doing so will encourage a more active exchanges in ideas, a more inclusive approach to providing solutions, and a stronger societal partnerships.
Healthy community for entrepreneurs, researchers, students, and policy-makers. The NICE Platform has been developed to cater to its foremost client-the agricultural entrepreneurs or the “agripreneurs”. In this platform, the agripreneurs will find various materials that will aid them in their agriculture enterprises and interact with prospect partners i.e. co-agripreneurs wanting to collaborate or share ideas, processors or buyers interested in buying their produce, or researchers for their inquiries.
Stories What is the story behind the researches? behind the statistics and figures? Through the NICE platform, the spotlight will be focused on the other breed of modern heroes–their faces, the struggles and successes, and the aspirations and inspirations behind every tear and sweat that touch the soil.
Lack of access to affordable financial products, limited resource and idea on inputs with higher quality, limited knowledge on using technologies and market data, and poor market links are the common problems in the value chain of the farmers that have been causing the decrease of their population.
Considering that Philippinesis an agricultural country, nothing has been done to cultivate it further. From year 1960’s, our country was promoting this sector and was able to encourage students from other countries to study here. But things changed – from being the primary agricultural country in the region, to the one of the many countries that export people to study the said profession abroad. It is ironic that they are now better than us in Agriculture with more modern farming technologies.
In contrary with that, Agriculture-focused organizations thought of ways for farming to still be viable for everyone. And Social Entrepreneurship is one effective way to create business from the farmers’ produce. Social Entrepreneurship pertains to analyzing the social problems in an area and creating a social change through applying entrepreneurial principles and operations. It also talks about providing new opportunities with an impact on Social Integration, economic sustainability and fair society and making farming a more productive livelihood.
Who wouldn’t know Tony Meloto, the former founder of Gawad Kalinga? He has been promoting Social Entrepreneurship to the youth since 2013 by providing Scholarship for them in the School for Experiential and Entrepreneurial Development or SEED Philippines and still in line with the mission of ending poverty up to now. The students in the said school will be taught and guided to create their social enterprises that will give advantages to the community and educate every individual to maximize the use of any produce of the farmers and fishers in order for them to get out of the downward spiral.
In this way, farmers and fishers are being prioritized as they have been neglected by the society in terms of professionalism. Tony Meloto proposed the idea of innovation through their produce and makes them into more valuable products to be offered to the consumers. As of now, there are several enterprises that are considered products of the SEED students. For instance, The Merienda Group, an enterprise of SEED Students from batches 2 and 4, is aiming to define and promote the taste of our local snacks. It started to form its group last May and this Merienda Group consists of different snacks and beverage like Puto ni Papa, a home-made rice-cake with a melted cheese on top. Probinsarap, chips made from raw sweet potato and Saba banana. Kapetan Barako, a Philippine Liberica coffee from the highlands of Lipa Batangas. OhGK which is a beverage consisting healthy ingredients like Oregano, honey, ginger and Kalamansi.