PANGASINAN TOWN TO HOLD PAKWAN FESTIVAL

BANI, Pangasinan: For the first time after the Covid-19 pandemic, this western Pangasinan coastal town will finally celebrate its Pakwan (Watermelon) Festival from January 27 to February 4.

The festival is to honor the town’s farmers and offer thanksgiving for the bountiful watermelon harvest this season.

Krissy Jesy Pison, spokesman of Mayor Facundo Palafox, said that this year’s festival will also be an opportunity for the town to showcase its different tourist attractions.

Pison said that just like in previous celebrations, watermelons grown and produced here will be featured in the different activities lined up for the festival.

The Pakwan Festival here was last celebrated in February 2020, a month before the national government has imposed a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus.

This year’s 9-day festival will include an agricultural trade fair, farmers’ cookfest, pakwan carving competition, pakwan cookfest (for students and tourism establishments), street parade and dance competition, farmers’ night, fun art, pakwan mass eating and games, and street party.

Around 600 to 700 pieces of watermelon will be sliced and served during the pakwan mass eating scheduled on February 4.

Municipal agriculturist Jeffrey Pamo said that some 200 farmers here harvested about 2,500 metric tons of watermelons from the 120 hectares of plantations this season.

Watermelon now has a farmgate price ranging from P20 to P25 per kilogram (kg) for the round varieties, and from P35 to P40 per kg for the oblong varieties.

Pison said that this town grows one of the country’s “sweetest, reddest and juiciest” watermelons because the farmers use saline water to irrigate the alluvial soil where the watermelons are grown.

Watermelon farming here began in the village of Banog Norte when five farmers planted watermelons after a rice harvest in 1986.

Farmers from other villages also planted watermelon the following year after they learned that the product sold well.

Planting season begins in early September in this town’s upland villages, after the rice harvest in December in its lowland villages.

Pakwan Festival was launched in 2013 to promote this town’s watermelons and to invite more local farmers to plant watermelons.

Pison said that with thousands of tourists expected to join the festivities, the town’s tourist attractions will also be promoted.

This town also boasts of its beaches that face the West Philippine Sea, cave systems, a mangrove park, and a waterfall.

It also has salt farms in the villages of San Miguel, Banog Norte, Luac, Garrita and Aporao, which tourists may opt to visit.