Name one of the major problems facing the world today?

Who or what organizations take

care of these types of problems? Why?

The most urgent problem that the world is facing today is COVID-19. It is a humanitarian crisis
on a global scale. The virus continues to spread throughout the globe, placing health systems
under unprecedented stress in the battle to save lives. The human scale of this tragedy is set to
worsen as the virus spreads to lower income countries with weaker healthcare systems. But the
pandemic is much more than a health crisis, it's also an unprecedent socio-economic crisis.
Stressing every one of the countries it touches, it has the potential to create devastating social,
economic and political effects that will leave deep and longstanding scars (Replication-Receiver,
2020).

Today, the full capacity of the UN system is mobilized, including the socio-economic strengths
of over 40 UN Development System entities. The UN’s socio-economic response, technically
led by UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), is one of three critical components of
the UN’s efforts to save lives, protect people, and rebuild better, alongside the UN’s health
response, led by the World Health Organization (WHO), and the humanitarian response, as
detailed in the COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan, led by the Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

References:

Replication-Receiver. (2020, July 07). Coronavirus disease COVID-19 pandemic. Retrieved July
25, 2020, from https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/coronavirus.html

Identify the actors that facilitate economic globalization and illustrate the value chain of
Mindanao products (you may give 1 product to trace for its value chain process)

The actors that facilitate economic globalization are (1) the nation-state, (2) global corporations,
and (3) International Monetary System. Since globalization is the present stage of capitalist
development, and the nation-state is the territorial political unit that organizes the space and
population in the capitalist system. On the other hand, global corporations operate in two or
more countries and face many challenges in their quest to capture value in the global market.
Lastly, the IMF focuses on the functioning of the international monetary system, and on
promoting sound macroeconomic policies as a precondition for sustained economic growth
(Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2019).

The demand for soybean for food is huge and is almost everywhere. In fact, about two percent
of the produce by farmers from Mindanao are retained for family consumption and as planting
material. Indeed, there are five (5) value chain players, the farm input suppliers, soybean
producers, dicers/traders, wholesaler/retailers, and processors. Farmers practice sun drying
before selling costing them about PhP0.28/kg making the unit cost of producing dried black
soybean equal to PhP10.68/kg. Farmers planting soybeans generally get a higher price of
PhP23.30/kg dried weight of soybeans because they do the value-adding activity of sun drying.
A farmer gets a profit of PhP12.62/kg of dried soybeans. However, an immediate and potential
intervention used to improve the chain is to reduce the level of intermediaries by linking the
farmers to direct processor-users of soybeans within the province and region or by scaling up
the business of the farmers through clustering for consolidated marketing. Buyers prefer locally-
produce clean and dry soybeans, thus, upgrading the production process through the use of
appropriate technologies are needed to deliver dry, clean and sorted soybeans to their
customers. After which, several institutional markets are readily tapped as regular markets for
locally-produced soybeans. The “taho” being sold by the sidewalk-vendors are the soy-beans
locally produced by the country. This value chain ends in the consuming of taho, soymilk, and
tofu by the local consumers.

References:

Dela Cruz, Renita & Neric, Cesar Jr. (2016). Value Chain Analysis of Soybean Grains:
Mindanao to Cebu and Manila Marketing Channels. Postharvest and Mechanization Journal. 2.
33-51.

Peterson Institute for International Economics. (2019, June 10). The International Monetary
System: Facing the Challenge of Globalization. Retrieved July 25, 2020, from
https://www.piie.com/commentary/speeches-papers/international-monetary-system-facing-
challenge-globalization