Farmers: Allow our produce reach market
Hardly had they recovered from the losses brought by the strict lockdowns last year, vegetable farmers in Benguet Province found themselves back in the same predicament in March and April after the government had imposed bubbles that made their deliveries to various bagsakan difficult.
They are no longer sure even if these bagsakan
— trading centers — still exist.
Benguet has long been the national capital region and other adjacent provinces’ source of quality vegetables. Its farmers also supply restaurants with produce.
Business no longer boomed for them since last year, however.
The first declaration of an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in
March 2020 meant a longer
time to transport produce to different places, resulting in spoilage that means losses for them and the traders.
It also means the consumers had to pay more for their veggies. Agot Balanoy, speaking on behalf of the League of Associations of the Vegetable Trading Post in La Trinidad, Benguet lamented the fewer trips completed by their trucks, resulting in heavy financial losses to all stakeholders and industry players.
She said many of them suffered losses of about 30 to 50 percent from their usual earnings.
Balanoy said many farmers have stopped planting vegetables completely.
Part of the blame, she said, falls on the different interpretation and implementation of the lockdown rules in the different towns and cities where their delivery trucks pass.
With spoiled products, many of them resorted to dumping undelivered vegetables on empty lots to save on fuel cost going back up north.
To avoid these, she asked the local government units to honor the guidelines issued by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Covid-19.
“They should ease up on the travel restrictions,” she said. “While we ask ‘who’s going to shoulder our losses,’ we also ask ‘who’s going to provide our folks with food?’” Balanoy stated.