The Department of Agriculture (DA) is planning to make its emergency shipments of low-cost vegetables from Bukidnon to Metro Manila more permanent. It however still needs to work out the logistics bottlenecks, said Undersecretary Jose Gabriel M. La Viña.
In an interview with the BusinessWorld, La Viña said, “We’re hoping to make it permanent … Bukidnon has 30,000 hectares available for highland vegetables. It can also produce strawberries. It’s only a question of bringing the produce to the market.”
The DA was in a TienDA Malasakit temporary market on Friday and Saturday in San Andres, Manila, where farmers directly sold low-cost produce from Bukidnon.
The market sold P2 million worth of vegetables (€31,000), according to La Viña, who noted that the vegetables were still sold at below prevailing market prices despite the cost of transportation. Metro Manila’s traditional vegetable growing areas are in Northern and Central Luzon.
“The long-term [solution] there is really to arrange for cheaper transport. … The problem is moving around. The food is not in the right place. The demand is here, the food is here, and we have [more than] 7,100 islands. It’s a logistical problem,” according to La Viña.
