Thesis (Master in Management) -- University of the Philippines Mindanao, July 2022

In the early stages of the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), it was a big challenge for the CARP beneficiaries on what to do with the land granted to them through this program. In 1992, the tenants of Biao organized themselves as a Cooperative in order to consolidate their resources and able to access the needed support from National Government Agencies and Financing Institutions for both technical and financial requirements. Throughout the years, BARBCO has expanded its major operations such as lending facilities, retail/consumer services, tableya and chocolate making and farming. Its success did not come easy. The analysis on its internal and external factors highlighted the issues and problems of the cooperative which had significant importance. As shown in the industry analysis, the growth of the cooperative is slow but on a steady pace. One of the major factors for this is due to the limited financial resources available. Despite its land resources, it has limited its operations considering the cash availability. In order to address this concern, this cooperative took advantage of the financing programs by the Department of Agriculture (DA) and Department of Trade and Industry. This also helped them access the needed technical know-how and build up their organizational capacity to operate the cacao farming. With COVID-19 Pandemic which stated last 2020, the cooperative was able to discover its potential product line ? Agricultural products (pakbet, and other value-added vegetables). This product line was able to provide and compensate for the reduced sales/income from its major products (cacao and tableya). Moreover, it has opened up its marketing program to include online selling and beef up its social media presence. This will help the cooperative in keeping up with the competitors in the industry. Also, its plan to computerize its accounting system will expedite the financial statement preparation and will facilitate the analysis of this data and provide useful information to the Board of Directors, General Manager and even the Supervisors of each product line, in making key decisions which will help improve the cooperative's net income and/or reduce its costs/expenses. In general, the cooperative's financial performance over the last three years (2018-2020) can be considered satisfactory given its financial stability ? high collection efficiency and ability to pay off its loans. Likewise, the cooperative took advantage of the different financial programs being offered by the National Government Agencies, such as the DA and DTI.