Recent news reports that lower-priced but obviously chemically-treated Chinese Carrots have flooded the market raised alarm bells among local vegetable farmers.
Vegetable traders claimed that the flooding of Chinese Carrots had dropped prices of vegetables in the market as the imported carrots are sold at only P25 to P30 per kilo.
I could only scratch my head because local carrots produced by farmers in the Bukidnon Vegetable Production Area could be sold lower than that price range of P25 to P30 for imported Carrots.
Puedeng tapatan. In fact, puedeng patayin ng mga local farmers ang imported Carrots and other vegetables because the production cost of Carrots in Miarayon, Talakag, Bukidnon is only about P5 to P6 per kilo.
At a farm gate price of P10 to P12 per kilo, masaya na si farmer and those local Carrots could in turn be sold for less than P30 in the market with a proper logistical and distribution support from government.
This is where our government policy of opening up the local food and commodity market to foreign goods in the assumed “free and competitive market” had done injustice to our local producers.
The playing field is not even for the Filipino farmer and he could not compete with foreign farmers who are subsidized by their government.
In Vietnam, Thailand and China, their governments find a way to support their producers by enabling them access to the market and in some cases, like the Vietnam Rice, marketing the farmers’ produce directly abroad.
Dito sa atin, we tell our farmers to be competitive forgetting that from his farm, he has to load the vegetables on horse’s back to the nearest highway and from there these are packed loaded to small trucks and brought to a consolidation area where the traders control the price.
The Filipino farmers could compete, why not? But government must provide them the enabling policies, infrastructure and logistical support for them to be able to sell their produce and make a little profit.
I have always maintained that our problem in the Philippines is not the lack of food supply but the very poor logistical positioning system and absence of post harvest facilities.
Government must really step in and assist. This was the model which we introduced through the TienDA Program when I was Agriculture Secretary and the MinDA Tienda when I moved to the Mindanao Development Authority.
The solution to this problem is for government to re-organize the National Food Authority (NFA, which had been emasculated by the Rice Tariffication Law, to focus not just on rice but on other agricultural goods as well.
Then, just like how they do it in Japan, establish Food Production Consolidation Centers or in our case Regional Food Terminals where the farmers and fishermen could just deliver their produce without the need to haggle for prices.
Imagine a sight where the chicken farmer, hog farmer, vegetable farmer, fruits or even rice farmer confidently toil in the farm knowing that his produce has a fair price when he delivers this to the government operated Regional Food Terminals compete with cold storage, processing facilities and logistical support.
From there, let government do the job of repositioning the supplies to regions where these are needed.
Ito ang isang gawain na hindi puedeng ipaubaya ng gobyerno sa private sector.
Food Security is critical to national economic growth and security and government must be in complete control of the situation or else we would be a pathetic nation suffering from hunger while wallowing in the vastness and abundance of God-given resources.
#KungGustoMaramingParaan!
#GovernanceIsCommonSense!
(These photos were taken during the 1st Mindanao Vegetable Derby in Miarayon, Talakag, Bukidnon in December 2020.)
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