Pomona, Los Angeles, California – The Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) today introduced Mindanao’s Organic Red and Brown Rice to California’s biggest Filipino-American Supermarket chain as part of the agency’s program to promote Mindanao Products.
Straight from a successful engagement with Sorghum Seed producers in Houston, Texas yesterday, the MinDA delegation met today with the executives of Seafood City in Pomona.
Seafood City executives Elewin Rebaya and James Yap, along with their Vietnamese consultant, Thanh Yran Viet, expressed interest in marketing the organic rice produced by Mindanao farmers affiliated with the Don Bosco Multi-Purpose Cooperative.
Rebaya said Mindanao’s organic rice will definitely have a market not only in Filioino-American communities but also health conscious Americans.
Seafood City officials said they will work on the financial numbers to set the selling price of the Organic Rice.
They also expressed interest in buying young coconut, Bangus, fruits and dried fish from the Philippines.
The engagement with Seafood City was arranged by the Philippine Consulate in Los Angeles and Agriculture Attache Dr. Joselyn Javelosa.
This latest development where a new market is being opened is expected to boost the production of Organic Rice in Mindanao.
The MinDA earlier organized organic rice farmers to form the Mindanao Organic Rice Council to promote Organic Rice farming in the face of plummeting buying prices for commercial palay.
Commercial palay buying price is between P12 to P14 per kilo while Don Bosco buys organic palay at between P20 to P22 per kilo.
The area planted to organic rice in Mindanao as certified by the Control Union, an international certifying body, and the United States Department of Agriculture, has now expanded to 1,000 hectares.
Farmers in other provinces in Mindanao are now shifting to organic rice farming but it will take three years of transition before their produce could be certified as truly organic.
The Mindanao Organic Rice Program is supported by the US International Assistance for Development (USAID).
(Photos by Mayette Tudlas, MinDA OC.)
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