AN INTENSIVE ORGANIC LETTUCE FARM IN CAVITE
THE PRODUCTION OF LETTUCE— the most popular vegetable for salads and sandwiches—on a commercial scale in this country has grown because fresh salads are becoming increasingly common table fare for many Filipinos who want a healthy lifestyle.
MAJOR PRODUCTION AREAS
Lettuce has joined the array of green leafy vegetables that have become abundant in local markets and supermarkets as more and more people appreciate the health benefits of consuming such greens and their relatively low prices.
The number of medium to small farming operations in the mid- to high-elevation areas of the country producing mixed varieties of lettuce has increased in the last five years. Harvest volumes of the leafy veggie have grown because of the increased demand from farmers’ markets, supermarkets, hotels, restaurants, fast-food chains, and high-end food service companies.
The top lettuce-producing province in the country is Benguet in Northern Luzon’s Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR). Many farmers in the Benguet towns of La Trinidad, Tublay, Atok, Bokod, Kabayan, Buguias, Bakun, and Mankayan along the 150-kilometer Halsema Highway—also known as the “Mountain Trail” as it connects Baguio City to Sagada, Mountain Province—produce lettuce. Halsema—which boasts of having the highest point in the Philippine highway system of 2,255 meters above sea level in Atok—is the only route that the farmers can take in bringing their produce to La Trinidad and Baguio.
In La Trinidad, the provincial capital and trading center, hundreds of small landless farmers grow lettuce regularly; they rent lots with a maximum size of 1,000 square meters per farmer in the annex fields of Benguet State University (BSU) for R15 per square meter per year.
BSU rents out cropping sites at its annexes in Barangays Betag and Balili as one of its income generating projects for supplementing the annual subsidy that it receives from the government as a state university. Just across the provincial highway from its sprawling main campus, Betag is the site of the University’s 32-hectare Strawberry and Vegetable Farm, an area that local residents know as “The Swamp” because of its watery state during the rainy months of the year.
The Balili site, a smaller area behind the main campus, is where BSU maintains its research and handson instruction facilities for openfield and greenhouse organic crop