Benguet, some parts of Mountain Province and Ifugao had been the source of over 82 percent of highland vegetables being supplied in the archipelago over the past several decades. These had been the home of vegetable farms that has sustained the livelihood of at least 300,000 individuals who rely on commercial crop production that supplies the demand for semi-temperate vegetables. Because of this lucrative source of livelihood, farmers started to expand their vegetable gardens from the mountain slopes up into the interior parts of several forest reservations resulting to environmental degradation.
The invasion of forest reservations is driven by the economics – there is gold in high-external input commercial production of temperate-climate vegetables. This has driven families to settle permanently inside environmentally critical forested areas and clear the land for vegetable production. One can clearly see the massive deforestation of forests while travelling along the Halsema highway. The forested areas above the Loo valley going towards Tinoc are now checkered with vegetable farms. All along the Halsema you will see terraced vegetable farms that can be beautiful.
While the terraced vegetable farms are attractions for travelers, they weaken the soil and rock formation. This leads to soil erosion and even landslides costing substantial damages to the environment and properties through the past several years.
Amidst the threats of the entry of smuggled and legally imported cheap semi-temperate vegetables from China and other parts of the Asia-Pacific region to cater to the high-end market, locally-grown crops remain to be the choice of Filipinos because they are fresher, crispier and readily available. It will be recalled that sometime between 2002 to 2004, the region’s lucrative vegetable nearly folded up after smugglers flooded the Metro Manila and lowland markets with cheap vegetables from China but with the combined efforts of concerned government agencies, local governments and the national government, the situation stabilized and the local vegetable industry was able to rebound and sustain its growth to date.
To show the government’s all-out support to the sustained growth and improvement of the local vegetable industry that remains to be the province’s major economic driver, some P600 million has been earmarked by the previous administration to build the Benguet Agri Pinoy Trading Center (BAPTC) purposely to provide an added value for locally produced highland vegetables. However, despite its completion over two years ago, the facility was never occupied for trading by the farmers because of several issues among of which the alleged excessive rates being collected in the trading center. The BAPTC was built over a 7-hectare property of the State-run Benguet State University (BSU) to provide farmers with the necessary support in improving the marketing and packaging of their produce to attract high-end buyers away from imported or smuggled vegetables.
We are elated to learn that farmers are now slowly patronizing the services offered to by BAPTC. They can see the noble intention of the government’s heavy investment of public funds to improve the livelihood of vegetable farmers by improving their income from their produce. Surely, the bond between the farmers and the middle traders is slowly being broken because the farmers are realizing that these middle traders or disposers are actually making a killing by acting as the link to the outside market, living them unempowered and only with crumbs. Now, the farmers know how transparent trading is done with free or minimal services and that they are also slowly learning the processes in this kind of trading in preparation for the turnover of the facility to them to manage.
One cannot live with lies all the time and the earlier propaganda against the BAPTC is part of the game of those who will lose most, the middle traders. Expose the farmers to credible sources of market information and they will know the difference between true value and manufactured information. It is heartening an increasing number of them now prefer dealing with BAPTC because they get bigger income and they can immediately dispose of their produce and go back home.
BAPTC must continue re-inventing itself until such time that reliable and trusted farmers will emerge from their ranks to become responsible officials administering and managing the facility. It must ensure farmers know how to read the market, institute mechanisms for distributing market information as part of farmer development, and program continuous leadership development to ensure that there is a capable pool of several lines of leadership. Now, BAPTC was able to prove that its operation will be for the benefit of the farmers unlike in the traditional set up that the middlemen are the ones raking in pure profits at the expense of the hardworking farmers who have spent their lifetime producing vegetables that are served on our tables.