Angeles City-Out of 1,800 teams, Sakahon made it to the best 15 teams in the country during the 1st Young Farmers Challenge competition of the Department of Agriculture (DA) held in Calasiao, Pangasinan last month.
DA Secretary William D. Dar led the ceremony in awarding young agri-preneurs along with Undersecretary Kristine Evangelista, Assistant Secretary Noel Reyes, Mr. Anthony Ng, and DA-AMAS OIC Executive Director Ramon Yedra. Sakahon’s CEO, Elaine
Carlos Timbol, and COO Elvin Laceda represented the team during the ceremony.
Sakahon is an agritech social enterprise that focuses on two major challenges in the agricultural sector. First, the ability of food producers, farmers groups to consolidate their produce and participate in a competitive trading system. Second, the opportunity to know what the market needs ahead of time, even before farmers plant their crops.
Sakahon is not just any farm-to-table web platform. It is said to be an innovation that will change the process flow of the farm-to-table system providing opportunities to both farmers and food manufacturers.
Sakahon partners with Filipino farmers who provide fresh harvest for the weekly deliveries to the cities in Pampanga and Metro Manila. Their partner-farmers are learning how to grow quality crops to satisfy the demand of growing markets.
Timbol’s family is in the rural banking industry, and the industry’s clientele are the farmers and fisherfolks. In one of the events organized by the DA, Timbol met farmers
and saw the disparity between the producers and the buyers. That was when she decided that she wanted to find a way to be a part of the solution. One of the farmers she met is was none other than Elvin Laceda.
Laceda has a vision to innovate the Philippines agricultural sector by creating an inclusive value chain where everyone wins. The model began with farmers in Pampanga through the membership program of RiceUp Farmers Incorporated.
Knowing that farming needs to be data-driven and market-centered, Elvin entered various competitions to elevate the business model. Elvin met Von Payumo in a Hackathon (a tech-based competition) and with their shared mission to create an innovative system for farming.
All together, they further continued with their mission and research by constant visitations to the farms and farmers. Through these visitations, they saw the root-cause of the disparity, and so began the journey of Sakahon, a platform that will simplify supply chain in agriculture and create an inclusive producer-market business relationship.
