WHATEVER happened to the vegetable value chain project of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in partnership with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)?
We are prodded to ask this question because we cannot just look the other way and pretend that all is well in vegetable farming, marketing, and trading nationwide. The fact is, something very bad is now happening in the vegetable industry, as evidenced by the glut in cabbage harvests in the vegetable basket of Benguet and in the cabbage-producing towns in Cebu.
In Baguio and elsewhere in the highlands of northern Luzon, many farmers have opted not to bring their harvests of cabbage to the lowlands because of very low prices being offered by traders. Instead of suffering huge losses in transport expenses, they would rather not harvest their crops at all.
‘With a new DA secretary in the person of Francisco Tiu Laurel, we hope the department will fast-track this value chain project and operationalize it for the benefit of our farmers and consumers.’
Local officials in northern Luzon point to the fact that vegetable middlemen would rather buy in the lowlands of Pangasinan and La Union instead of going all the way to Baguio and the Cordilleras. What they buy are cheap, imported and sometimes smuggled, vegetables.
Along E. Rodriguez Blvd. near St. Luke’s Hospital in Quezon City, one can see a sign put up by the Episcopalian Church saying they are helping the farmers of Benguet market their cabbage for P20 a kilo. This church is one of the philanthropic institutions helping the farmers sell their produce physically and online, and is requesting the public to chip in by buying the vegetable for their use.
In a Cebu market, members of a civic organization bought cabbage in bulk and gave them to passers-by. The Cebuano farmers are struggling with the same problem of low farm-gate prices.
A former official of the Department of Agriculture said the farmers themselves are to blame, for they planted the same crop simultaneously and so they have to harvest at the same time. We doubt if this explanation will hold water, since rampant smuggling of onions, garlic, cabbage and carrots is more to blame.
Before President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. left the Department of Agriculture, the agency joined hands with JICA to implement a five-year project that would enhance the vegetable value chain in the country.
Dubbed Market-Driven Enhancement of Vegetable Value Chain in the Philippines (MV2C), “this technical cooperation project aims to improve the Philippine vegetable value chain, therefore encouraging higher yield and income for farmers and achieving food security, availability, accessibility, and affordability to every Filipino,” the DA said.
Under the project, a vegetable value chain roadmap will be developed to identify problems and solutions in the value chain, as well as determine the roles of every stakeholder. The MV2C pilot projects will be implemented in vegetable-producing provinces like Benguet and Quezon, where a value chain survey has been conducted.
With a new DA secretary in the person of Francisco Tiu Laurel, we hope the department will fast-track this value chain project and operationalize it for the benefit of our farmers and consumers.
