| Summary, etc. |
The oil palm plantation of Nabunturan Agrarian Reform Community Integrated Cooperative is a cooperative of Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries and non-ARBs located at Nabunturan, Compostela Valley, which started in 1996. The business of the cooperative offers eight services: tricking, small water impounding project (irrigation service), catering, consumers? market, pre and post-harvest facilities, lending and oil palm plantation. The focus of this study is the oil palm plantation project. In 2018, farmer-members decreased to 134 from 151 and the asset of the cooperative grew to PhP 22.9 million in 2017. The harvest reached an average of 3,618.30 metric tons (mt) of Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFB) valued at PhP 10.8 million from 2016-2018. The cooperative, however, had been facing problems. First was the high turn-over rate of field harvesters that led to low production. Due to the upsurge of the banana industry, most harvesters, decided to transfer to banana plantation. Second, due to the delay of payment from the buyer, some of the farmer-members withdrew their membership, while some decided to sell the produce to other buyers and some decided to change their crops to banana and cacao. Third, the oil palm plantation had difficulties in expanding its scope since the local government strongly supports the banana and cacao industries. Fourth, the General Manager, who was acting as the cooperative?s Marketing Officer, also became the Human Resource Officer who was responsible for all the administrative tasks. Hence, the marketing department was given less priority. Lastly, there was a lack of financial management skills among the management. In spite of that, Agumil Phil. Inc., the sole buyer, and milling company of the cooperative; and Land Bank of the Philippines, its financial institution partner, provided technical and financial assistance to the cooperative?s business operations. Presently, the cooperative hired field harvesters from other municipalities and provinces to meet the market?s demands. The oil palm project has 270.09-hectare farmland which has 34,560 hills. These problems and issues have been preventing the cooperative to become a dynamic and resilient organization in response to the socio-economic needs. Therefore, this strategic plan is formulated for NARCICO to develop and improve its operation to achieve the organization?s vision, mission and goal. The cooperative framework guides this strategic plan. This framework focuses on three levels of analysis; (1) the system level, (2) the cooperative enterprise level, and (3) the member level. These three levels are used to examine the business operation of the cooperative. The first level of approach is system level which refers to the external environment. It shows social cooperation at the community level, economic, technology, government role, industry structure, and environment. These six inputs produce two inputs which is the economic capital and social capital. To sum up, the external factors threats, and opportunities will be identified. It will be expressed quantitatively by using External Factor Evaluation Matrix. The second level refers to the internal environment. It refers to the four functional areas in management ? organization and human resources, marketing, financial and operation. It will sum up into strengths and weaknesses and translated quantitatively by using the Internal Factor Evaluation Matrix. Lastly, the third level of analysis presents the details of various roles of cooperative members as a patron, owner, investor and community member. The plan of the members is expressed in the cooperative?s vison, mission, goals, objectives and core values. With these three levels of analysis, strategic options are proposed and determined. The tools will be used to express the options: Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities ? Threats Matrix and Internal-External Matrix. It will be assessed quantitatively by the Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM) to formulate strategic choices. There is one strategy that will be used in the business of operation-market penetration. This strategy proposes various activities that will help the production of the project. It suggests hiring additional fieldworkers in proportion to the farm area. Hiring fieldworkers will help the production to increase the harvest from 2,118.25 metric tons in 2018 to 11, 641.71 metric ton in 2020. Harvesters help the organization meet the demands in the market. Aside from hiring workers, the strategy also suggests these activities: First is to intensify market intervention. Second is to conduct information and education campaign for public awareness. Third is to gather farmers and non-farmers for membership purposes. Lastly is to strengthen the partnership and link new partners with national government agencies and private organizations. Therefore, the results of these strategies show the production growth by 2% for the next five years from 2019-2023. The cooperative will reach its target members of 200 per year. |
