Innovation

Bayer Kubo is a sustainability program at Bayer in the Philippines that aims to bring innovative solutions for smallholder farmers in agriculture and health. Anchored in its mission of ‘Health for All, Hunger for None,’ the program captures interventions and awareness sessions for Filipino farmers, their families, extended families, and immediate communities, including farmer cooperatives and associations. This sustainability success story is a partnership of Bayer's three divisions (Crop Science, Pharmaceuticals, and Consumer Health), Bayer’s global business services arm in Manila, and the Asia Society for Social Improvement and Sustainable Transformation (ASSIST).

Inspired by the “Bahay Kúbo,” a type of indigenous stilt house, a Philippine cultural icon, and a bayanihan (communal teamwork) symbol, the Bayer Kubo program aimed at carrying the unique collective resolve of Filipinos in building and upholding strong communities. This was made possible through the engagement of smallholder farmers and families. It started in 2022 and presently happens in the Bayer Learning Centers located in different provinces of the country: one in Brgy. Cabanbanan is in Manaoag Pangasinan, and another is in Dolores, Quezon.

“In this iteration of the Bayer Kubo—the latest one—we are focusing on supporting our smallholder farmers and also women, to [give] them more information, and raise their awareness on different topics about agriculture, self-care, women’s health, and also to some degree help them in their daily lives, for example, giving them more background on financial literacy,” says Ms. Nadira ‘Nadi’ Abubakar, communications manager for Bayer in the Philippines.

Through awareness and training sessions, the program delivered topics on pressing issues relevant to its target audience: health-oriented subject matters, women's reproductive health, extensive self-care, conscientious parenthood, and healthy aging.

For agriculture, Bayer Kubo covered essential topics on agricultural best practices and farm management in the demo farms within the area. Discussions and exhibits of current trends in agriculture technology are also part of imparting knowledge and building the capability of our Filipino farmers.

Financial inclusion is also covered through the program’s Train the Trainer curriculum, which covers financial literacy themes, including the basics of savings, cooperative management, and the establishment of community-driven savings groups. As noted by Ms. Nadi, “the farmers were very very happy to report that they have started their savings groups with their friends. That they are already working on something together. And you can see that they’ve really made progress”.

The Bayer Global Business Services Manila employees with the farmers in Manaoag, Pangasinan during the Financial Literacy session. (Photo: Nadira Abubakar)

Inspiration

The leadership's prime inspiration for pursuing Bayer Kubo is recognizing that our agricultural communities need help. Disruptions brought by the pandemic have led to a slowdown in farming and negatively impacted our network of farmers. This calls for the recovery of our 9.22 million agriculture workers, their families, and our growing nation, which will continue to depend on an even stronger food system.

Most people in the agriculture sector are often located in underserved and unreached places in our country. Improving their quality of life and helping them learn and access the necessary resources to achieve this are the visible and material reasons to implement the Bayer Kubo. Ms. Nadi also shared her insights that “…one of the things that we can learn from this is…this is something that can be replicated. This is something a lot of farmers need...That was very clear.”

Bayer leaders understand that to fulfill the company’s mission of ‘Health for All, Hunger for None,’ it must find ways beyond the conventional approaches to reach smallholder farmers, introduce better ways to yield crops, and help them manage their farms. In addition, “a healthy farmer is essential to have healthy farms,” as Ms. Nadi highlighted during the interview. Ultimately, Bayer Kubo gives a holistic direction to build more networks of healthy and well-informed farmers in the Philippines.

Overall impact

Bayer Kubo is a result of several previous iterations, which started in the areas located near the corporate office in Metro Manila. As of 2023, the value and impact of this sustainability innovation can be seen in the level of reach and engagement that it has achieved. In Dolores, Quezon alone, the learning center has reached over 3,000 individuals, empowered 100 households, and primed at least 300 Community Champions. In Manaoag, Pangasinan, on the other hand, more than 2,000 individuals benefited from the capacity-building program. While this was the case for the planned activities, the mayor has requested to extend the program to another location, which validates Bayer Kubo’s scalability and replicability.

After the program's completion, the Bayer Kubo Program Report 2023 reflected its positive impact on smallholder farming communities. “You could see their eagerness to learn, their curiosity about the topics…You could see the level of engagement from them,” added Ms. Nadi. More than 94 percent either agreed or strongly agreed that their knowledge of the subject matter improved after the learning sessions. Ninety-one percent considered the topics relevant for them and their families, and 85 percent attested the helpfulness and usability of the learned concepts in their daily lives. From a learner experience standpoint, the engagement metric is capped at 90 percent. This result is upstanding and satisfies the intent of learning and retention. Perpetuating what they learned, 88 percent of the participants were likely to share their newfound knowledge with their family (75%) or their community members (66%). The personal testimonies of the farmers serve as proof of how well-received the program is.

Business benefit

To some degree, because smallholder farmers use Bayer’s seed products, the Bayer Kubo program also facilitates a beneficial route for market development and market penetration at the grassroots level. The ability to interact with product users allows Bayer to learn what the farmers need, when they need it, and how much they need based on the environmental and economic situations where they are. This way, the business can adjust its strategy—aligning it with the realities of the agricultural community, helping the farmers understand the product features, and addressing some of the challenges they face. Bayer may also seek ways to strengthen its value chain through these customer relationships and interactions.

From a human resource standpoint, Bayer Kubo serves as an avenue for executives and employees from different divisions, enabling function and global business services to work together in this sustainability initiative. “I think one of the biggest factors, really, that made this [Bayer Kubo] a big success was, one, it was a cross-divisional, cross-functional effort…bringing in the expertise and the support from the different divisions and employee volunteers from GBS…There was no silo. People really pitched in with what they could to support. That’s what made Bayer Kubo a big success,” Ms. Nadi confirmed. This translates into a boost in the overall people morale and acquisition of valuable insights coming out of farmer exchanges, learning sessions, and community immersions. This reinforces one core principle of the company’s new operating model, Dynamic Shared Ownership (DSO), which is customer-centricity. This is achieved by delivering faster and more impactful innovations for farmers.

At length, the company’s mission of ‘Health for All, Hunger for None’ is amplified as a guiding principle on why the Bayer Kubo program exists. It can be foreseen that the program will continue to evolve, reaching more communities and potentially scaling its footprint across the archipelago. Through this, the DSO principle of ‘mission-first’ also comes entirely tangible and manifested.

Social and environmental benefit

Bayer Kubo’s strategic positioning addresses both agriculture and health. This integration sets the ambition for tackling some of the most critical challenges our world is facing today. Linked with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Bayer Kubo program is an integral sustainability innovation of the company that aims to contribute to ending poverty, achieving food security, improving health outcomes and well-being, and engaging in an all-inclusive multi-stakeholder partnership for sustainability. Having a presence in some of the marginalized areas of the Philippines, the initiative creates panoramic information dissemination on key focus areas such as women’s health, financial inclusion, and sustainable agriculture.

On women’s health, testimonials from women in the community said that they wished they had known family planning early on when they were still starting their families because they would have better planned the size of their families. Even so, the women ensured the trainers that the information would not stop with them but be shared with their children.

In financial management, some launched their community savings group after the program engagement to improve the management of their funds and resources and promote entrepreneurship in their community. Understanding the different financial instruments available to them fostered a sense of hope for a better future.

In agriculture, agri-focused information transfer related to choosing the right farm inputs and the responsible use of herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers helped the farmers gain a comprehensive approach to achieving a better harvest. The collective expertise of Bayer professionals and their NGO partners steered the means to allow for the information flow needed, especially for developing economies like the Philippines.

“It is heartening to see that the Bayer Kubos…are also located in different parts of the country, so there’s really [a] room for application there, a lot of rooms to reach more farmers, reach more families, reach more communities that need or would like to have more awareness about these different topics,” Ms. Nadi added. Truly, the Bayer Kubo is not a ‘small stilt house’ and not simply a structure per se—it is a considerable feat both in purpose and impact.

Interview

Nadira Abubakar, Communications Manager