Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Oledan: Vegetables
By Radzini Oledan
Slice of Life
"...by the time they reach the market, the vegetables are close to wilting and appear shabby compared to those which are packed and shipped in refrigerated containers and marketed in classy grocery stores and malls."
BEFORE Sunday dawn, Manuelito Benion is usually ready to transport his produce of vegetables from Marilog, Paquibato district to the Bankerohan public market, or a distance of 75 kilometers.
He can be luckier than other vegetable growers in the area who find difficulty in immediately transporting their products to the market. Oftentimes they fall prey to traders who buy their produce at a much lower price, leaving them with so little for their day-to-day needs to survive.
"Most of us farmers do not fully recover our expenses," says Benion, father of five. "We are not really making money. We are just barely surviving," he added.
Indeed, by the time they reach the market, the vegetables are close to wilting and appear shabby compared to those packed and shipped in refrigerated containers and marketed in classy grocery stores and malls.
While the farmers' production and labor costs are relatively low, lack of appropriate technology and high-tech equipment leave them disadvantaged.
This has forced most of them here and other areas in Mindanao to give up and sell their lands to agribusiness companies operating huge pineapple and banana plantations. Indeed, if our farmers cannot compete with cheap imports readily available and cheaper than local vegetables, then they are faced with only two options: find new approaches to farming or quit it farming altogether.
But for the Vegetable Industry Council of Southern Mindanao (VicsMin), small farmers should not despair. There's hope for the sector to find the mix of marketing strategies at last.
For a start, the market base of farmers must be strengthened. The particular strengths of cities and regions in Mindanao make it an ideal source of a steady supply of vegetables and it is not far off from the dream of finally marketing their produce to countries within the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East Asean Growth Area (BIMP-Eaga).
First things first. Adequate support from government and private sector is needed to fully realize the potentials of the agriculture sector, including generation of jobs. In 2002 alone, a total of 25,512 metric tons of vegetables were shipped out of the region.
Vegetable farmers are initiating new ways to rationalize their production scheme and marketing strategies. Growers are now clustering themselves to produce the volume of vegetables required by buyers and concentrating on three key production areas namely Paloc, Maragusan in Compostela Valley Province; Marilog, Paquibato and Calinan districts in Davao City; and Tupi and Polomolok, South Cotabato and General Santos City to beef up harvest.
With the new scheme, farmers like Benion can now hope for intervention in improving farm technology and marketing their products.
For several years, there has been little government support to the agriculture sector. Owing to policy failures and lopsided priorities, the pace of growth has not been sufficient to sustain employment and income growth, the reason why small farmers are marginalized.
Economic policies can come as a serious cost to small farmers. Privatization and deregulation calls for reduced government intervention, which meant less subsidies for the already support-starved agriculture sector.
The low budgetary allocation for the provision of production support systems like irrigation and vital farm implements, research and development, credit delivery and provision of agricultural support services effectively hamper the potential of the sector.
No doubt that there are institutional bottlenecks. And nothing could be more devastating for the small farmers than their implied exclusion in the form of cartel control of the food market chain and unfair competition posed by imported agricultural commodities.
The VicsMin is taking on a huge challenge to fill in the gap which government through the Department of Agriculture does not want to take upon itself. They're also being assisted in a big way by Growth Equity for Mindanao (GEM) of the US agency for international development.
For more than the rhetoric of agricultural sufficiency must be concrete means to assist farmers to become self-sufficient.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (August 16, 2005 issue)
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