ZAMBOANGA SIBUGAY, Philippines โ As the holiday rush begins, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Region 9 is making a simple appeal: choose local.
Buy a bag of locally grown coffee, a jar of homemade coco jam, or a basket of farm-made treatsโand youโre not just ticking off your gift list. Youโre helping keep farmers afloat, strengthening small community enterprises, and investing directly in the regionโs agricultural future.
Summit, Trade Fair
The call comes as DTI-9 opens the first Negosyo Agraryo Summit and Trade Fair, a three-day showcase of homegrown agri-products and MSME innovations from across the Zamboanga Peninsula and Isabela City. The event, held from November 25 to 27 at City Mall in Zamboanga City, gathers farmers, youth agripreneurs, and small business owners who often struggle to reach wider markets.
For DTI-9 Regional Director Al-Zamir Lipae, holiday consumption is an opportunity to close this gap.
โOur goal here is to promote their products, link them with institutional buyers, and give them the public exposure they truly deserve,โ Lipae said. Visibility, he added, is often the missing link that keeps farmers from scaling their livelihoods.
The summit marks the regionโs first DTI-led agricultural trade showcaseโan effort that builds on earlier initiatives such as the Coconut Festival and the Zamboanga Peninsula Exposition. This time, however, the focus is sharper: strengthen agri-based livelihoods and draw more young people into modern, tech-driven agriculture.
Beyond booths and displays, government agencies are also pitching in. Financing windows from SB Corp, LandBank, and DBP are being highlighted to help farmers and small entrepreneurs upgrade equipment, expand production, or break into bigger markets.
Buy Local for Holiday Gifts
For many participants, the fair offers what they can rarely afford on their own: free promotion. Marketing costs often eat into the already slim margins of small-scale producers. A platform like this, they say, is a chance to be seenโand to be chosen.
And this is where consumers enter the picture.
DTI hopes holiday shoppers will recognize the ripple effect of their decisions: buying local means investing in communities that depend on agriculture for survival. It means supporting farmers who wake before sunrise, youth agripreneurs trying to modernize the sector, and MSMEs pushing to innovate despite limited resources.
A locally sourced gift, in other words, becomes more than a treat. It becomes a statementโone that says strengthening the regionโs agriculture is a shared responsibility.
This Christmas, DTI wants people to ask a simple question before grabbing another imported good off the shelf: Why not choose something grown or made here at home?
About The Author
