What to do with garlic

In a rehash of the 2014 Senate Committee on Agriculture hearing which led to the dismissal of the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) director, Senator Cynthia Villar once again took to task the officials of the bureau for failure to closely monitor and manage the supply of garlic in the market.

For sure there is plenty of blame to spread around from: 1) alleged irregularities in the issuance of import permits, 2) deliberate under-importation by importers to restrict supply, 3) systematic customs misdeclarations by unscrupulous traders, and 4) outright smuggling.

But the fundamental circumstances which explain the seasonal spikes of garlic prices are: 1) local production is so little compared with demand, and 2) the local cost of production is so much higher compared with the landed cost of imported garlic.

For the period 2009-2016, the national average garlic production was 9255 tons. This is only 14 percent of the national annual demand of 64,800 tons as estimated by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) based on the Supply Utilization Accounts (SUA) method. With the alternative method of estimating demand (Survey of Food Demand, SFD), the shortfall widens (only seven percent self-sufficiency) as the demand balloons to 128,000 tons per year.

On the other hand, over the same 10year period, average domestic farm gate price was R86 per kilogram versus the reported landed price of R17 per kilogram imported garlic. The June 2017 quotation for export garlic from a major supplier in Qingdao, China is $300-$500 per ton, equivalent to R15-R25 per kilogram. This R60 per kilogram spread makes importation (and smuggling) so attractive and tempting.

The situation therefore is similar to that of rice. In order to bring down prices for consumers, the solution is to liberalize imports. But for Filipino garlic farmers to compete and survive, they must dramatically raise productivity and reduce unit costs.

However, unlike in rice where local rice suffer in comparison versus imported rice in terms of price and quality, our garlic has one potentially protective feature. Local garlic are much more pungent and therefore better preferred by consumers.

Actually garlic is a very profitable crop for small farmers. The average cost of production is R41-R47 per kilogram versus the domestic average farm gate price of R86 per kilogram. With the average national yield of 3.26 tons per hectare, the net is R127,000-R147,000. These margins are three times better than the R40,000-R50,000 per hectare income from irrigated rice.

There is hope

Although garlic hectarage had been declining in recent years, average yields per hectare had been going up. In fact, there was a positive blip in production in 2015 which came from three provinces — Ilocos Norte, Batanes and Occidental Mindoro. In all instances the increase in production was associated with increased availability of clean, healthy seeds and the close cooperation between the provincial agriculture offices and the counterpart Department of Agriculture (DA) Regional offices in Regions 1, 2 and 4b.

In the case of Ilocos Norte, which accounts for close to 66 percent of total garlic production, the push came no less than from the provincial governor herself, Imee Marcos, who personally mobilized the Mariano Marcos State University (MMSU) and the Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB), University of the Philippines at Los Baños (UPLB) to fine-tune the technology for mass micropropagation and tissue culture of virusfree garlic planting materials originally developed by Lilian Patena and National Scientist Ramon Barba in order to assure that farmers in Ilocos Norte have access to clean, healthy seeds.

BPI draft garlic development plan

For these reasons I fully support the modest draft garlic development plan prepared by the BPI led by its new director, Vivencio Mamaril.

The key measure is yield per hectare. And the worst thing we can do is the knee-jerk reaction of launching a nationwide garlic production campaign. Worse, targeting 100 percent self-sufficiency.

The correct strategy is to concentrate production in the best producing areas and planting only during the better season of the year in order to attain optimum yields. The better farms in Occidental Mindoro report yields of 6.32 tons per hectares. With virus-free planting materials and intensive cultural management, average yields of 5.0 tons per hectare are attainable. These should bring down costs competitive with the R20 per kilogram landed cost of imported garlic.

Tactically we should initially focus our efforts and resources only in a few provinces (namely Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, Batanes, Nueva Viscaya, Nueva Ecija, Batangas and Occidental Mindoro where farmers have experience and who need no further persuasion to grow garlic.

The commitment of the local government is indispensable as demonstrated by the example of Ilocos Norte. The local governments should be encouraged to adopt garlic as priority commodity under the onetown-one-product (OTOP) concept of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and commit human and budgetary resources accordingly.

Garlic is propagated clonally using bulbs (not true seed). Viruses which significantly depress yields are spread through use of infected bulbs. A sustained, regular supply of healthy, virus-free planting materials is very important.

The two universities, MMSU and UPLB, have installed capacity to produce the required basic virus-free clones needed in the pilot provinces. It is a matter of providing the universities the necessary operating funds to sustain operations. This service function can be passed on to private seed companies or cooperatives later, after the universities perfect/fine-tune the virus cleaning methodology.

However, the actual commercial propagation of certified virus-free seeds will not be performed by the universities but by designated properly trained farmer seed cooperators/ farmer scientists supervised by BPI and Agricultural Training Institute (ATI).

Prices of garlic are always depressed at the time harvest. Farmers will earn more if they can hold on to their produce and wait for better prices. Support from the DA should include a bulb storage facility in each of the pilot provinces.

Finally, continuing research and development are needed for pest management, use of plant growth regulators, post-harvest physiology, processing and new product development. The Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development (DOST-PCARRD) should sustain its support for basic and strategic studies on the above subjects. The Bureau of Agriculture Research (DA-BAR) for its part should fund the necessary applied, site-specific, on-farm trials and farm demonstrations.

**** Dr. Emil Q. Javier is a Member of the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) and also Chair of the Coalition for Agriculture Modernization in the Philippines (CAMP). For any feedback, email eqjavier@ yahoo.com.