Rural-Urban Linkages, Strategic Alliances, and Quality Assurances:Emerging Responses to Current Agro-industrial

This publication is composed of three expositions presented in various international conferences in the region. The first paper chronicles the status of agro-industries in selected Southeast Asian countries, describing the various iniatives of governments, the private sector, and farmers' cooperatives to link rural and urban industries. The second exposition looks at how village marketing can respond to the growing demand of urban consumers for high-quality products and the challenges of having cost-effective marketing of rural-based products. The third paper is an empirical study conducted among small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) and large corporations in Mindanao, the second largest Philippine island located in the south where most agribusiness activities are concentrated.