It’s good that the Cebu City government is talking about tourism in the hinterlands of Cebu City, but I still have to hear of any Cebu City politician talk about its dying mango industry. I say this is a product mainly of ignorance. The City has for years focused on either the city barangays or the wrong priorities in the mountain barangays. It has, for example, given attention to the cut flower industry which benefits only a few and is water-intensive. Mango trees dot the mountain barangays from the shoulder of the mountain range facing the plains to the city’s boundaries with the towns of Balamban and Minglanilla and the city of Toledo.
Have any of our city officials visited the city’s hinterlands, and if they have, haven’t they missed the point entirely? And what are the signals sent by the barangay captains in these mountain barangays to the city? When I roamed the city’s mountain barangays in my younger years, the problems were not difficult to discern but could be easy to dismiss. You know there is a problem when a mango fruit bought at less than a peso from the farmer is sold at P60 per kilo or more in lowland markets. When these are processed and sold for export, how much are the poor farmers getting? And those farmers are being left to fend for themselves.
Historians can actually write a chapter on the city’s mango industry and it would be tragic. How many farmers have died tending to those fruits in terrains that are mountainous and therefore dangerous? I invite city officials to observe the entire process of tending to the fruits until these are sold in markets, fruit stalls and malls in the lowlands. The lack of help and attention by the Cebu City Government is sad.
I say this is one of Mayor Edgardo Labella’s missed chances. But there is still time. Some of his officials are from the mountain barangays. Former Cebu City councilor Jun Alcover spends much of his time in the mountains. They can still formulate viable plans for the industry with the help of the city agriculturist or other concerned officials.
Or they can learn from other mango-growing areas like Guimaras, which at least have given attention to the industry’s potential. I don’t know if the Department of Agriculture has conducted a survey on the number of mango trees being grown in Cebu City and in the province and how many of them are being made productive and how many have been neglected. As estambays would say, “kwarta na, naging bato pa.”
Aside from the share from the profits, farmers also need to be helped financially because tending to the fruits is capital-intensive. The quality of the chemicals used to induce the flowering of the trees and the pesticides should also be regulated. The safety of farmers who wrap each fruit with paper while these are dangling from branches should be ensured.
I am not an expert on the matter, but the city’s mango industry has the potential to make the lives of the city’s farmers better. Let us give attention to that potential.