Filippino veg farmers urged to take advantage of growing Asia Pacific demand
The Philippines currently only has $240-million share in the growing Asia-Pacific vegetable market, lagging behind Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia and has to regularly import more than $3-million worth of vegetables to cater to local demand.
Mary Ann Sayoc, East-West Seed General Manager, said there is a lot of potential in the Philippine vegetable sector because the country’s production is not even enough yet to cover the demand locally with vegetable production only increasing by around 2% per year.
East-West Seed is now hoping to remedy this situation by influencing more farmers to earn more by planting vegetables in addition to their existing crops. Sayoc said that they are on a mission to help smallholder farmers realize the potential of vegetable farming and how it could be a lucrative business.
“East-West Seed saw that there are three challenges facing the local vegetable industry: Our inability to compete in the billion dollar Asia-Pacific vegetable market, the perception that vegetable is not a profitable business and the low volume of vegetables thereby affecting food and nutrition sustainability. All these three challenges, East-West Seed is helping to address,” Sayoc said.
source: business.mb.com.ph
