Sacks of Rice from Farmers in Northern and Central Luzon Now Available for Purchase Online – Manila Bulletin

Digital service provider PLDT and wireless subsidiary Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) are overcoming the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic to continue supporting local rice farmers.

NCR employees from the two companies are making the digital switch to buy sacks of rice online from farming communities in northern and central Luzon in the second run of PLDT and Smart’s “Buy Local, Buy Smart” campaign. , held in association with the social enterprise and e-commerce platform Cropital in celebration of National Rice Awareness Month.

With the theme “Grow Local. Buy local. Eat local. #SuppportOurRiceFarmers, ”this year’s celebration is significant given the back-to-back typhoons that hit the country. Recent storms caused about P12.3 billion of damage to agriculture, of which rice production accounts for 39.2 percent, according to Agriculture Secretary William Dar in a recent televised interview.

Buy one, give one

PLDT and Smart take the campaign further to support affected farming communities with “Buy One, Give One”, which allows Metro Manila employees to automatically donate one bag of rice for every bag purchased. This initiative is part of Grupo MVP’s #TuloyPaRinAngPasko movement, a call to bring the joy of the holiday season to communities affected by the storm, including 286 families from Dumagat in Rizal province.

These families, who are partners in PLDT and Smart’s reforestation efforts in Rizal, lost their rainfed rice crops to Typhoon Ulysses.
Up to P100 of the payments for products sold will also go to a sustainability fund for an agricultural community in Pampanga, to meet their needs during the next growing season.

#Buylocal

The #BuyLocal campaign is an offshoot of the Digital Farmers Program (DFP), a Smart project with the Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Training Institute (DA-ATI) that seeks to empower Filipino farmers by providing them access to digital tools and technologies that it can help boost productivity and marketability.

During its pilot test in 2019, the #BuyLocal campaign succeeded in getting PLDT and Smart employees to buy rice directly from small farmers in the fourth-class municipality of Magdalena in Laguna.

With quarantine restrictions still in place, the campaign has changed online, allowing PLDT and Smart employees, as well as their families and friends to order and pay for bags of rice through store.cropital.com and receive the shopping at their homes for free. They can also get a discount of up to P90 if they use the coupon code “smartbuylocal” at checkout.

The DFP is a promotion of smart communities, within the framework of technology for development to reduce the digital divide.

The program is also aligned with the commitment of the PLDT group to support the 17 Sustainable Goals of the United Nations, in particular No Poverty (SDG 1) and Zero Hunger (SDG 2).