The Challenge
Butuan, an agricultural city in the southern Philippines, has a population of around 400,000 spread over 82,686 hectares. Despite its fertile land, local agriculture supplies only 18 percent of the city’s food needs. While Butuan has the potential to become the Caraga region’s food basket, it remains heavily reliant on imported produce. This dependence drives up food prices—locally grown vegetables cost about 50 percent more than in other Philippine cities—putting pressure on affordability, especially for the 80,000 residents living below the poverty line.1 Underlying these issues are a limited local supply of vegetables, volatile prices, and persistently low farm incomes. Farmers typically rely on intermediaries to sell their produce, reducing their earnings and increasing exposure to market risks.
The Intervention
To address these barriers, the city government launched AgriBOOST, a program designed to help farmers sell their vegetables directly to buyers at fair and stable prices through an AgriHub platform. The platform provides farmers with the opportunity to forward contract, ensuring that at least a share of their harvest will be sold at fair prices in the future. By communicating available contracts and hosting town hall meetings, the platform also aims to disseminate information and improve farmers’ predictions of market demand. The program also provides farmers with practical support, including farming tools, seeds, and fertilizers, as well as hands-on training and expert advice. Some farmers also get greenhouses to improve their harvests. AgriBOOST works with vendors and runs campaigns to encourage people to eat more vegetables, making the whole food system stronger. By strengthening the local food system, the program aims to boost vegetable production, stabilize prices, and raise farmer incomes.
The Evaluation
Researchers are partnering with IPA Philippines and the AGRIBOOST Program—a consortium including the City Government of Butuan, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Butuan UNDP SDG Local Action—to conduct a randomized evaluation assessing whether encouraging farmers to participate in AgriBOOST—through information and financial incentives—can improve farmers’ production decisions, sales volume, and income. The evaluation involves 240 smallholder farmers from the Butuan region who are randomly assigned to either receive incentives and information to encourage engagement with AgriHub or serve as a comparison group that does not receive these supports.
Results will be available in late 2025.
Sources
1 “BUTUAN AGRIBOOST PROJECT - SDG Local Action.” 2024. SDG Local Action -. January 23, 2024. https://sdglocalaction.org/butuan-agriboost/.
Implementing Partner
