A little conversation, a lot more action

I have spent much of my professional career in meeting rooms, having serious conversations that sometimes seem to move at a pace slower than I would have liked. It’s tiring work, if we’re all to be honest about it, but it’s this kind of work that leads to the two words that we all want to hear: actionable outcomes.

I understand the impatience. When a lot is at stake, another dialogue can sound like delay. But after years of shepherding and attending countless meetings, I have learned that the right meeting is not a substitute for action, but it is how the right action becomes possible.

The recently concluded ASEAN Food Security and Agribusiness Summit 2026 offers a useful example. The ASEAN Business Advisory Council Philippines, which I chair, organized the event last week as part of the Philippines’ chairship of ASEAN and as a major event to mark the AFSA, or the ASEAN Food Security Alliance.

The results of the summit are substantial: 29 cross-border joint ventures, projected private-sector investments of P12 billion and more than 30,000 direct and indirect jobs in agriculture and related industries. Just as important, the partnerships can connect Filipino smallholder farmers and local producers to stronger regional supply chains and wider markets.

Although not all those numbers are already results, they are nonetheless significant. Their value will depend on whether capital is committed, projects are implemented, farmers can participate on fair terms and businesses and governments stay accountable for delivering what they agreed to do. A Memorandum of Understanding matters because it gives partners a shared starting point and a reason to keep working together. That much is what I have seen after decades of being party to MOA’s and MOU’s, from our work in the early days of Go Negosyo, right through to the agreements we signed to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on business and now as we work for food security for the region. Always, it ended well when government and the private sector worked together toward a shared goal.

That is the practical case for public-private partnerships. Governments can help establish clear rules, coordinate across borders and make long-term public priorities visible. Businesses can bring investment, expertise, technology and routes to market. Producers and communities bring knowledge of the land and the realities of the supply chain. None can secure resilient food systems alone. Together, they can turn a regional ambition into a viable project.

But partnership is not created by putting people in one room and asking them to agree. It takes careful deliberation: identifying what each party can contribute, where risks sit, how benefits will be shared and what safeguards are needed for long-term success.

At the summit, the launch of the AFSA Food Security Policy Framework – co-developed by ASEAN-BAC Philippines and Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) – was a reminder that investment needs structural guardrails and regulatory alignment if projects are to endure. This much we have seen in the successful implementation of the Kapatid Mentor ME (KMME) entrepreneurship mentoring program with the Department of Trade and Industry. It was so well-designed that it was practically fully formed when it scaled to the ASEAN region as the ASEAN Mentorship for Entrepreneurs Network (AMEN), the project that we chose to mark the Philippines’ chairmanship of the ASEAN back in 2017. It now has close to 200 graduates from people across the ASEAN member-states, with hundreds of mentors and coaches from different countries and with its teaching modules being translated to the languages of ASEAN.

But such work is never easy. Planning can be slow, coordination is tricky and reaching a consensus among stakeholders is as laborious as it sounds. Often, however, they are the work, and we must see them as part of the process.

Frustration must never be an excuse for inaction. The stakes are bigger now than ever. Our farmers are facing increasing uncertainty as climate events become more frequent and intense. The ASEAN Food Security and Agribusiness Summit 2026’s focus on regenerative and resilient agriculture asks whether investment can strengthen food production while restoring ecosystems and preparing communities for climate pressures. This ensures that we respond not only to the crisis in front of us, but also to the ones that loom on the horizon.

And on a broader scale, the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz exposed Asia’s energy supply vulnerability. Nearly 90 percent of the crude oil transiting the Strait is destined for Asia. Growing global competition for critical minerals, meanwhile, is creating a new crisis for regional supply chains serving batteries, motors and semiconductors.

I mention this because, also last week, the ASEAN-BAC Philippines, together with the Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) and the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), presented their joint recommendation at the Asia Zero Emission Community (AZEC) Ministerial Meeting. We urged partner governments to strengthen and evolve AZEC from a climate initiative into a broader platform for resilient energy and resource supply chains and, at the same time, advance decarbonization and economic growth.

These wide-ranging questions cannot be answered by any single agreement. It requires sustained cooperation and the willingness to plan for outcomes beyond the next announcement or funding cycle.

I have learned not to measure a meeting only by how swiftly everyone comes to an agreement. I measure it by whether people leave with clearer responsibilities, stronger trust and practical next steps. Dialogue is not the destination, and neither is a signed document. But when careful planning brings public institutions, private investors and producers around a shared purpose – and patience keeps them at the table long enough to act – the meeting can become the beginning of something real.