LA TRINIDAD -- After six months, a new vegetable processing and packaging facility worth P40 million will soon rise at the Benguet Agri-Pinoy Trading Center (BAPTC).
The facility is funded by the Department of Agriculture (DA). Its groundbreaking and turnover ceremony was held Tuesday afternoon, December 22, and spearheaded by DA Secretary William Dar, together with DA-Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) Director Cameron Odsey, BAPTC chief of operations Dr. Violeta Salda, Benguet State University (BSU) president Felipe Comila, Governor Melchor Diclas, and La Trinidad Mayor Romeo Salda.
Dar, in his speech, said through the facility, the unsold or wasted vegetables, especially at times of low prices, will absorb the untraded vegetables.
"The very rational of having this food processing facility, ayaw natin na mangyari muli na iyong excess ay matatapon lang. We still want to convert to value-added products," Dar added.
The DA official said the objective of the facility is a packagin innovation unit that will continue to innovate and will produce packaging materials that are relevant to be use by traders in the center.
On the same day, a P40-million trading capital to the BAPTC management took place. According to the agriculture department, it is meant to enhance the center's marketing capability to buy unsold produce from farmer's cooperatives associations, minimizing vegetables that are sold and thrown away.
The soon-t-rise facility will be monitored jointly by the center and BSU.
Odsey, DA-CAR director, said that amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the vegetable farmers have suffered from losses wherein some produce of the farmers were not sold, others were donated, and some had rotten vegetables.
Odsey said even before Covid-19, there were problems in the erratic marketing of veggies, adding there were months where the prices of the vegetable are low below the cost of production.
The DA official said a lot of measures were taken and these include ensuring the vegetable produce going to the markets remain unhampered and linking farmers to direct buyers of Metro Manila.