Benguet Governor Nestor B. Fongwan urged vegetable-producing areas nationwide to form an alliance to ensure their readiness when the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' Free Trade Area (AFTA) completes its implementation in 2015.

“By now, we should have established a strong partnership instead of [continuing to treat] each vegetable-producing area as a competitor, so that we will be able to hurdle the challenges that will confront the vegetable industry once the AFTA will be fully implemented in the next three years," he said.

Fongwan said the Philippine Vegetable Industry Development Board should formulate plans and programs to make the vegetable industry globally competitive.

He strongly recommended that “marketing strategies of the industry...be enhanced” to allow locally grown vegetables to be sold at their supposed buying prices so that farmers will no longer be on the losing end of the transaction.

“Concerned government agencies and local governments should empower the farmers to be able to sell their produce to the high-end buyers who have stringent criteria in buying vegetables from the markets," said Fongwan.

He added that in order to cater to these buyers, "We must already practice proper packaging, sorting, value-adding and other improvements."

Smuggled vegetables

The Benguet vegetable industry had a bizarre time of it from 2001 to 2008, when locally grown carrots were being sold at P1 per kilo and also discarded in bulk, as no trader would buy produce from local farmers because of the presence of bigger and cheaper carrots, smuggled from China, flooded Manila markets.

“We should not wait for 2015 before we act since it will be too late then. Let us act now by forming a solid alliance of vegetable-producing province that will advance our own interest in promoting the industry that will sustain the source of livelihood of over 250,000 vegetable farmers in our province,” Fongwan said.

Organizing an alliance

The governor said he will initiate the creation of an alliance with other vegetable-producing areas in Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija and Ilocos Sur that will compile data to determine the capacity of the country’s vegetable farmers to cater to the expected high demand for semi-temperate crops from the Philippines.

Fongwan said that the establishment of more cold chain and processing areas in vegetable-producing areas, the soil treatment of acidic and overused lands, and the creation of a farmers' marketing cooperative could strengthen the bargaining power of farmers in international markets so that their produce will not be bought at low prices relative to their production cost.

He admitted that locally produced vegetables have the quality and the required volume, but they lack the proper packaging and marketing system that will encourage high-end buyers to seek them out. - BM, GMA News