How not to be dumped in February (a Cordillera agriculture story during the COVID season) Part I
ONE of the most dispiriting images on social media during the Luzon-wide COVID-19 lockdown was farmers in Ifugao dumping their tomato produce by the roadside. One particular post garnered 10,000 reactions and a debate in the comment section ensued. And if that wasn’t enough, FB posts of farmers dumping cabbages and carrots in Ifugao and Benguet were also circulated.
These posts particularly struck locked-down Manila readers because cabbage was selling at more than P100 there even before the March lockdown. Tomatoes were selling at P30 in Manila public markets at that time. This wasn’t a COVID-19 phenomenon. In fact, there was an argument between the “Discover Nueva Vizcaya” and the Ifugao Highland Farmers’ Forum, which posted photos of tomato dumping last March 20. “Discover Nueva Vizcaya” said that the photos were taken two years ago. One national TV network repeated DNV’s allegation. IHFF countered that among their photos was one that showed farmers dumping their tomatoes while wearing face masks. But dumping of produce has indeed been going on, and not only in the Cordillera.
Cameron Odsey, chief of the Department of Agriculture – Cordillera, said that farmers had been calendaring their planting months before the COVID-19 crisis. He said that this is the first gamble farmers have to take. Odsey said that the case of tomatoes had been a recent practice in Ifugao. The road leading to Tinoc was completed only recently, and one of the positive results was the opening up of the market for the produce of Tinoc farmers not only in Buguias in Benguet but also in Nueva Ecija at the other end. Tomato is largely sold in Nueva Vizcaya.
According to Odsey, tomato has become a major crop for Tinoc farmers in the summer as they have no competition from lowland farmers because of the cool weather in Tinoc as well as the relatively better irrigation necessary to grow tomatoes. Tinoc farmers usually plant the Avatar and the Diamante varieties. They dumped their produce indeed in 2018 because of the oversupply as these varieties are prolific bearers. But the reason for the dumping of tomatoes starting last March was because of the restriction caused by the COVID -19 lockdown. When the lockdown was imposed, Ifugao was scheduled for vegetable trucking only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Tinoc usually delivers about 20 truckloads of tomatoes to Nueva Vizcaya Agricultural Terminal in Bambang. According to the IHFF, with the M-W-F scheduling, the trucks would arrive all at the same time and only a few were bought there.
Tomatoes are very perishable and it can take just a day to make tomatoes become overripe and therefore unsellable.
The FB posts of dumping were mostly taken in Bambang. Odsey said that to cover production costs, tomato farmers need to sell their produce at P15 to P20 a kilo. In NVAT at that time, prices were down to P7 to P10 a kilo. When the FB posts became viral, the restriction was lifted and trucking to NVAT became daily. The price of tomatoes then went up to P17/kilo. But owing to the prolificacy of the tomato varieties, the cost went down to P3 to p5 a kilo weeks later, and dumping resumed. Odsey said that the dumping of cabbage and carrots was a different matter.
These vegetables are sold to the La Trinidad Trading Post and the Benguet Agri-Pinoy Trading Center.
The Ti Alyansa dagiti Pesante iti Tae’ng Kordilyera (APIT TAKO), a non-government organization concerned with Cordillera agriculture, said that the inconsistent quarantine policy of the government was devastating to the farmers.
“On 18 March, the Department of Agriculture started issuing “food passes” to facilitate passage of delivery food trucks through police-manned checkpoints. And by 22 March, DA had gotten the national government’s Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to agree to unimpeded passage of delivery trucks through checkpoints, whether or not these bore government-issued food pass stickers,’ APIT TAKO said.
“But local government units along the highways leading to and from Metro Manila continued to insist on so-called border controls, and delivery trucks invariably got stuck in long queues as police checked truckers’ papers and their cargo, and perishable produce, like fruits and vegetables, often rotted or dried up. Vegetable dealers incurred heavy losses,” it added.
DA’s Odsey said that farmers scheduled the planting of these crops in late 2019 when the plausibility of a COVID-19 disaster was far from their minds. If these and other highland vegetables would be harvested by February till the end of the summer months, they would have been bought by the tourists. He also said that these would be the same months when fiestas and graduations would be held. Benguet had a premonition on January 17 to 19, 2020, when Manila Mayor Isko Moreno closed the roads leading to Tondo and Divisoria for the annual Traslacion. Divisoria can accommodate 500 tons of highland vegetables daily and fortunately, Mayor Moreno was able to help bring in the vegetable trucks there.
Then, of course, COVID happened. “Surprisingly, potatoes and Chinese cabbage (wombok) were not as affected but tomatoes, carrots, and cabbage were,” Odsey said. “Potatoes and cabbage were everyday food while the rest were for menudo and pancit which were fiesta fare,” he added.
Cabbage went to as low as four to seven pesos per kilo during the height of the lockdown. At that time, while most parts of the country, including the Cordillera region, were easing up on their lockdowns, Manila went into modified enhanced community quarantine in August, causing the movement of trucks to be controlled again.
Many of the produce left at the trading post in La Trinidad were stalled and Benguet came out with the scheduling of entry through municipal clusters. Concerned municipalities, particularly Buguias which accounts for the majority of the production, suffered as a result and the clustering was discontinued.
Cases of COVID-19 among the biyaheros or the farmworkers delivering produce in Manila hit La Trinidad and the trading post was repeatedly closed for disinfection and contact tracing.
“The decline in vegetable trading was also due to other restrictive quarantine decisions. Government early on banned hotel and restaurant operations and social gatherings,” said APIT TAKO. “These accounted for a significant percentage of carrot, wongbok, lettuce, cauliflower, and broccoli consumption. Worse, the government’s stringent guidelines resulted in a halt to public transport, suspension of construction activities, and closure of factories and other workplaces. And the government was slow and inefficient in providing support for the survival of displaced workers and their families,” it added.
In the end, the National Economic Development Authority – Cordillera said that agriculture in the Luzon area suffered and almost 77 percent of its losses was due to unsold agricultural produce. Of this, about P25 million were from high-value crops like those in the Cordillera. To the bleeding (and the dumping), the government and all the other stakeholders would have to come up with solutions. And one of the solutions came crash landing like that of the favorite Koreanovela.
Will you catch me when I fall: stopping tomato dumping in Tinoc Part II
WHAT to do with rotten tomatoes other than throwing them at the faces of your hated politicians? Last May 2020, the Department of Agriculture – Cordillera (DA-CAR) was tasked with disposing tons of tomatoes thrown by disgruntled farmers from Tinoc near the trading post in Nueva Vizcaya after it was reported that there was a tomato glut and Ifugao farmers were throwing their tomatoes away. The tomato dumping started in February and went on during that period. There were more where they came from, the farmers said. They just didn’t bother to harvest them and just left them to rot on their plots. DA-Cordillera Regional Director Cameron Odsey said that the tomatoes were initially sold through the Kadiwa Express, DA’s trading arm. Last May, about three tons were even bought by only three entities. Other than tomatoes, the Kadiwa Express was able to sell 530 tons of assorted highland vegetables worth P16 million, mostly from Benguet, to more than 50 huge buyers. The Kadiwa on Wheels and the Kadiwa retail stores were also able to sell more than 17 tons worth P14 million.
One of the more altruistic deeds was done by Ifugao towns buying these Tinoc tomatoes. Kiangan started the practice and was followed by the other towns. According to the records of the DA-CAR, the other LGUs outside of Cordillera had bought more than 250 tons of vegetables from the region amounting to P7.3 million since April last year. These LGUs included Bugallon and Binmaley in Pangasinan; Orani in Bataan; San Ildefonso, Bocaue; and Balagtas in Bulacan. These towns distributed the veggies to their constituents as part of their ayuda.
Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) National Manager Raul Q. Montemayor said that fixing the distribution problem should be the key so that the private sector can resume their trade. “DA Kadiwa and the LGUs can help but their activities are costly and unsustainable,” he said. “And the volumes are too big for them to handle,” he added. The Philippine Army’s Northern Command in Angeles City also opened in late May a trading post in nearby San Fernando City to sell highland vegetables. Other than mercy buying, groups helping the Tinoc farmers advocated for food processing facilities.
The Ifugao Highland Farmers Forum said that a processing facility for tomatoes should be large enough to handle the glut. “With tons going to waste, what is needed is a large processing facility,” it said in its position paper. “The processing plant in Ilocos (Norte) is too far and the table tomato varieties being produced and traded here at NVAT — the diamante and avatar varieties — may not be the ideal varieties for making tomato catsup and other commercial tomato products,” it said.
Sun-drying tomatoes was one other suggestion. “With many women’s organizations in Nueva Vizcaya having small-scale drying facilities, locals surely need to learn the technology to dry and package the tomatoes into saleable products,” IHFF said. Odsey said that among the recommendations DA cited is the exploration of alternative markets. He said that they are planning to partner with San Miguel Corporation for the distribution of tomatoes and other highland vegetables. Odsey also said that they are planning for a marketing hub at the Food Terminal Inc. In Taguig, Metro Manila.
“The MOA (memorandum of agreement) between DA and FTI is still being facilitated. Its immediate approval will address storage area requirements of Cordillera vegetables,’ he said. He also said that a processing facility was proposed to be installed at the BAPTC in La Trinidad.Well, the agricultural gods must have heard them.
DA Secretary William Dar, who was a long-time president of Benguet State University, said that he is allocating P60 million (DA Cordillera was only expecting P20 million) for vegetable processing, packing, and cold storage facilities. Dar said P40 million will be for the vegetable processing facility and P20 million for the packing facility, including cold storage. He said that instead of BAPTC, the processing facility will be in Buguias (which is nearer Tinoc) and the packing and cold storage facility will be along Halsema Highway, possibly in Atok town.
DA also gave BAPTC last November a revolving fund of P20 million for the purchase of excess and unsold vegetables which can then be processed. “This is part of the government’s effort to help our farmers so that they will not just throw away their agricultural produce. The BAPTC will buy them and process them,” Benguet Governor Melchor Diclas said. Of course, tomatoes will rot if only government agencies are involved. The private sector should also be passing the catsup, so to speak. Perhaps the best story to come out with the garbage tomatoes issue, as IHFF would have it, is the story of CLOY.
CLOY is more known as the acronym of Crash Landing On You, a Koreanovela which became famous during the COVID-19 lockdown.
One of those who became couch potatoes during the lockdown was former Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat. He belonged to an international NGO but the pandemic had made him sedentary, so he started watching Koreanovelas and became enamored by them. That was until Jerome Dumlao, his college friend and good friend, told him that his bed-and-breakfast inn in Baguio was gathering dust.
It was at that time that the news about tomatoes from Ifugao being dumped on the road hit social media.
“We thought that there would be smaller players in the vegetable trading business who can go directly to the farmers and buy their products at fair prices,” Baguilat, who actually started improving the road of Tinoc during his representative days, said. He and the Dumlao couple (Tina is a news editor) decided on the idea of selling tomatoes, vegetables, and other Cordillera products to Manila. It was Baguilat who decided to use CLOY in their social enterprise but instead of “Crash Landing On You,” he tweaked it to “Cordillera Landing On You.”
The idea was to sell not only Cordillera produce but also other products like facemasks from Cordillera woven products, peanut brittle, Benguet coffee, ube jam, woven face masks from Abra and Ifugao, Sagada lemons and etag or highland ham, walis tambo, and many others. Buyers can order by going into the CLOY FB page. On Sundays, Jerome goes down to Manila to deliver the orders.
In time, CLOY became so popular that they decided to include products from other indigenous groups, like honey and avocados from the Mangyans in Mindoro. Baguilat said that when CLOY took off, the dumping of tomatoes actually ended and they were left with no more tomatoes to sell. “I still honestly think that we need to overhaul the trading system dominated by big players. They’re the ones getting richer while the farmers were gambling leaving the consumers with no choice. We in CLOY, we’re just a very small player. But still, in my experience, the big traders dictate the prices,” Baguilat said. “In Tinoc, it was really a case of oversupply worsened by the lockdown. Which made transport a gamble that’s why they decided to just dump them. But now prices are high so I’m sure everyone is planting tomatoes again,” he added.
Agriculture remains a gamble but should the tomato glut commence again, the DA, down to the small players like CLOY, will be there to catch the fall.
“When you get dumped, you just love them harder” — More ways to stop vegetable dumping in Cordillera Part III
IN the first week of February, a Facebook post showed a truck of radishes being given away in front of Wright Park. It was deja vu again for Cordillera netizens who have time and again been bombarded with FB posts of tomatoes, cabbages, carrots and even cutflowers being dumped on roadsides. Then they heaved a collective sigh of relief when it turned out that the barangay there had bought the radishes as an act of charity.
As it turned out, vegetable farmers have been making a killing with their produce since November, said Department of Agriculture Cordillera Regional Director Cameron Odsey. He said that cabbages, for example, have been selling for more than P100 a kilo since the start of the year. Compare that to the five pesos per kilo in March and April last year, when some of the farmers thought it better not to harvest and just leave them to rot on the fields.
As discussed earlier, the problem with last year’s vegetable dumping was largely on the problem of demand. The cancellation of fiestas and parties during the COVID lockdowns contributed to this. “Beyond supply chain disruptions, the longer-lasting effects of COVID-19 are likely to be felt on the demand side,” said the World Bank paper, Transforming Philippine Agriculture During Covid-19 and Beyond.
“It is highly likely that the collapse in output and employment following the economic lockdown will have knock-on effects on demand, including demand for food,” it said. DA-Cordillera was tasked to look for solutions to the dumping problem. One of the recommendations was the use of crop programming. “Crop climate calendars augment traditional crop calendars by not only specifying planting and harvest schedules but also describing phenological states, cultivation practices and weather and climate requirements that any crop faces throughout a cropping season,” said an April 2020 paper from Philippine Institute for Development Studies on the development of crop programming for Benguet.
“The case to document this information in Benguet is compelling: The mountainous province experiences a unique microclimate and phenomena such as frost and hail and derives income from the cultivation of high value crops such as carrots, cabbage and potatoes amidst this,” it said. Odsey said that introducing crop programming will take more than phenology or the study of periodic events in vegetable gardening and how these are influenced by seasonal and inter-annual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors such as elevation.
He said that the tendency to gamble among Benguet farmers is also a major factor. “They will take risks. There is a tendency for them to go for broke,” he said. “The crop programming scheme in Atok was never formalized nor implemented,” the PIDS paper said. “Its promotion has been limited to IEC materials. The farmers recognized, however, that it might be better if all farmers in Atok followed the scheme, which they understand would lead to less fluctuations in prices; however it has been much different in practice,” it added.
And as it turned out, the Benguet farmers were dealt a good hand during the end of 2020. “While we were affected by Typhoon Ulysses, the effect was not so great as it was in the lowlands. About twenty percent of the crops were damaged in the region,” Odsey said. He said that the Benguet vegetables had to take over the absence of lowland vegetables, which caused the prices to escalate. “By February, the lowland vegetables were recovering. You can see this from the prices of wombok (Chinese cabbage) coming down as the harvest for lowland pechay are beginning to come in,” Odsey said. DA-Cordillera also fast-tracked the establishment of vegetable processing centers to prevent vegetable dumping.
He said that P60 million had been earmarked for these centers. “As of now, most of the post-harvest processing is minimal,” Odsey said. “This includes trimming, cleaning and packaging them like the chopsuey packages,” he said. “We have to take into account that buyers expect their highland vegetables to be mostly fresh,” Odsey said.
The next processing we will be introducing is juicing especially for carrots and broccoli, he said.
DA-Cordillera is also planning to create kimchi and sauerkraut, he said. “But these are special markets,” Odsey said.