A euro 3-million (P193 million) food production assistance program will be carried out in six vulnerable provinces under a European Union (EU) grant aiming to reduce any adverse impact of climate change on poor communities.

The Focused Food Production Assistance (FFPA) to be implemented by the local government with the monitoring of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) will aid Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur, Misamis Oriental, Misamis Occidental, Oriental Mindoro, and Occidental Mindoro.

Pierre Morissen of the French Agricultural Research Center for International Development said that aside from economic and environmental sustainability aims, the EU program wants to help developing countries achieve a level of equity in wealth distribution as the wide disparity in economic levels between the rich and poor communities are more prounounced in poorer countries.

Searca Executive Director Gil C. Saguigut Jr. said any success, best practices, or operational guide that can come out from the FFPA will be a basis for policy recommendation of Searca to the government.

The Philippines is among the first to benefit from the Searca-EU's food assistance program.

"There are 11 countries in South East Asia. (But) the fact that we're in the Philippines, we would like to help our host country.

Climate change affects agriculture, and we like to focus our assistance to agriculture as a component of food security," said Saguiguit at a memorandum of agreement (MoA) signing for the FFPA.

Saguiguit believes the strategy in this poverty reduction program is a key factor in its success. Here, the partnership between the local government units which own the programs, the Indigenous People groups as linked by the National Commission on Indigenous People, and technical institutions like the Philippine Rice Research Institute (Philrice) is seen as the major success factor.

NCIP Commissioner Felecito L. Masagnay said the Ancestral Domain Development Protection Plan is hoped to bring development to the most marginalized areas in the country. The important instrument here is the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) granted to IPs which can be a tool for the0ir capital generation and economic partnerships.

Occidental Mindoro Governor Josephine Y. Ramirez-Sato said her province's FFPA involves a total of P3 million including P1 million for land for satellite fish hatchery and P2 million for intensified rice production (certified seeds subsidy).

In Oriental Mindoro, the FFPA costs a total of P32 million of which EU is providing for P25 million and the local government, P7 million. This includes P10.3 million for support for lowland agriculture (fertilizer, vegetable, seeds), fishery development (aquaculture, fish processing), P4.7 million; equipment acquisition, P2.1 million; and human resource development, P1.2 million.

The private sector is seen to further boost food production program in these provinces.