Agro-processing industry is key to resiliency

Cabbage farmers in Mantalongon, Dalaguete, last week sold their harvest at only P4 to P6 per kilo. This was due to surplus production at the farms as what happens occasionally when the mountain gets a good amount of rain. The surplus vegetables would have ended up as waste. But a timely call for buyers made by some netizens on social media saved the day.

Among those buyers were some community pantry organizers. The other day I received an automated text marketing message from the online grocery shop where I frequently source my food supply. It too bought the surplus cabbages of Mantalongon and are selling these for a bargain. I will be buying cabbage and carrots from the shop soon to turn them into coleslaw.

When the same surplus problem saddled farmers in Dalaguete with unsold stocks July last year, the Department of Agriculture promised to come up with better marketing and distribution strategies for the produce in Dalaguete. Apparently, the thinking continues to be that better marketing and distribution systems will minimize the incidence of surplus produce rotting in the dumps. The recent case in Mantalongon highlights the reality that this kind of thinking is faulty.

Faced with an abundance of cheap cabbage in the shop, coleslaw immediately comes to my mind. Other consumers may think of the fermented version of processed cabbage called sauerkraut. Now, has anyone among our policymakers thought about what consumers are thinking?

The process of making agricultural products into jarred and canned goods that feed into shop shelves has never become an established industry in our country. Our agricultural processing sector is crude, small-scale and, in most cases, home-based.

Our agricultural and technological schools are storehouses of various researches on agro-processing and agricultural technology, but neither government nor private sector is serious in investing capital for such knowledge to further develop and turn into industrial-scale quality production.

As a result, that chili garlic sauce in your refrigerator came all the way from China. That minced garlic paste was imported from Thailand. And those jars of coleslaw dressing and fermented cabbage, also known as sauerkraut, are made in the USA.

Meanwhile, our Mantalongon farmers are occasionally forced to sell their surplus produce at P4 to P6 pesos per kilo. And we’re happy to spend time in the kitchen making a large bowl of coleslaw from such a bargain. This is a microcosm of our agro-industrial development policy or the lack of it.

In 2008, three Japanese researchers did a study on the role of agro-processing industry in poverty reduction in Thailand. The study by Watanabe Jinji & Kurihara, published in the 2009 issue of the Journal of Asian Economics, concluded that the development of the agro-processing industry is pro-poor.

Aside from playing a leading role in the high economic growth of the Thai economy, the agro-processing industry contributed to reducing poverty, particularly in two ways. One, it increased farmers’ income through the purchase of their produce at stable prices. Two, it employed poor farmers at factories during agricultural off-seasons.

When the pandemic first hit the Philippines in March last year, millions of people mostly in the service and tourism sectors lost their jobs. Many families went hungry as the government struggled to distribute modest dole-outs to the poor. Those dole-outs were mostly spent to buy food. Today, millions of our countrymen still suffer from food insecurity. Proof of that are the long lines at community pantries.

Had we been serious in developing and modernizing our agro-processing industry beyond lip service, we could have avoided this fate.