Story and photos by Suzanne June G. Perante / Special to the BusinessMirror
WHEN one thinks of Baguio City, strawberries, salad vegetables and cut flowers come to mind.
The red, heart-shaped ground berries, salad-type vegetables and lovely blooms have always been associated with the Pine City, otherwise known as the summer capital of the Philippines. Today you do not even have to go to Holland to see tulips in bloom. Baguio City plants the flowering bulbs.
Because of its semi-temperate climate, Baguio does not only favor the growth of pine wood and salad vegetables but has also become a favorite vacation spot for visitors, local or foreign. Many students from the lowlands—like me, from Isabela, who goes to school at the University of the Philippines Baguio—find it conducive to learning. But, of all these favors that the upland terrain and climate provide, a Manila-based company discovered the great potential of growing in commercial scale what are said to be Baguio’s “glamour crops”—strawberries, cut flowers and salad vegetables.
In the early 1970s, Vicente Puyat’s Manila Newtown group purchased a 200-hectare rolling terrain along Asin Road, 3 kilometers west of Baguio City. Initially, the rocky slopes designed were for a housing and golf-course project, but the country’s worsening economic stability at that time prompted the real-estate firm to freeze project development.
To keep themselves busy, caretakers of the land had to cultivate some portions of the area (for home consumption) into vegetable gardens and strawberry plots in experimental quantities. This gave birth to King Louis Farm.
Large commercial production of strawberries was soon launched.
Applying Israeli strawberry technology, King Louis was able to introduce superior-quality berries for the domestic market, with an average production of 120 tons per season. With the brand Angelo, King Louis’s strawberries were shipped domestically to Metro Manila, Cebu, Bacolod, Iloilo, and Davao. The seasonal harvest, moreover, made room for substantial export to Hong Kong.
King Louis directly supplies RFM Corp. with sugar-packed strawberries for its Selecta Ice Cream. Likewise, Griffith Laboratories is a major supplier of strawberry puree for Presto Ice Cream and Jollibee’s strawberry sundae.
King Louis is the strawberry supplier of Mountain Maid Training Center, a food-processing center operated by nuns of the Good Shepherd Congregation with students as working staff. The custom fruit-processing center located at the Mines View Park is famous for its fine strawberry jams, jellies and syrups.
More often than not, Baguio visitors would flock and fall in line just to avail themselves of Good Shepherd products. The nuns only process the best fresh strawberries. This tops their ingredients in maintaining quality products, and to do it is to get their raw materials from equally quality-conscious sources like King Louis.
King Louis General Manager Efren Chatto who is now the vice mayor of Balilihan, Bohol recalled in a phone interview with the BusinessMirror that his company is not only quality conscious, but also a trendsetter.
“Ever since we went into the farm business, we have always been introducing new strawberry or cut-flower varieties in the market. We had to sacrifice time just to let people know a new product. We had to break Baguio’s conventional standards for us to sell our ‘imported’ breeds,” Chatto said.
Mary Rose Abes, a classmate of mine and a self-confessed strawberry lover, says she doesn’t mind the distance between the city proper and the strawberry farms in La Trinidad, Benguet, just to get the fresh berries.
“It’s nice to have the berries harvested before your eyes, especially when you eat them raw,” she claimed.
To get to know the real picture on how the three aforementioned high-value crops get sustainable production and a steady supply for the domestic market, Mary Rose and I decided to go to La Trinidad, Benguet. We randomly interrogated a group of local farmers and toured strawberry fields, cut-flower farms and verdant lettuce plantations.
We first landed on a strawberry green house owned and managed by Jade Palayen, who claimed he pioneered elevated strawberry farming using hydroponics technology, which uses water instead of soil. Palayen is associated with other farmers in the area, who apply modern farming method. He made his green house available for strawberry pickings to tourists who enjoy the pick-and-pay opportunity. Likewise, the elevated-technology berries are prevented from touching the soil and kept fresh and clean.
Anton Aquishion, a farmer engaged in strawberry farming for more than a decade, recalled that the area owned by Benguet State University he rents used to be a grazing area for livestock. He said he pays the university P7,500 per 500 square meters annually.
Camillo Perez, 64, used to cultivate a farm along the mountain trail, but opted to transfer to La Trinidad since the market for his crops is nearer. He likewise rents a half-hectare farm lot from BSU. Perez said he practices crop rotation. He then plants lettuce, which takes 50 days at the seedling bed and, when the leafy salad vegetable reaches 100 days, it is ready for harvest. He usually harvests 2 tons per cropping season. To sum it up, there are three cropping periods in a year to produce an estimated yield of 6 tons. Alternately, he would plant strawberries the following year.
We walked further into a cut-flower farm in Bahong village, owned by Presley and Willinia Cayat and managed by a certain Joel Dumadag, who concentrates on growing Malaysian mums and potted roses, which they claim to be their best sellers. We were informed the price of Malaysian mums at farm gate is P100 per dozen, while roses command a staggering P450 a dozen during peak seasons like Valentine’s Day. They supply the blooms to Baguio City and Dangwa in Metro Manila.
We concluded that, using modern-day technology on strawberries, salad veggies and cut flowers has kept sustainable production and a steady supply for the domestic market.
The blooming cut-flower industry has institutionalized and converted the rolling terrain into a cut-flower capital.
Back in 1995, Panagbenga, a native term meaning “blooming season” was used to launch Baguio City’s Panagbenga flower festival.
Image credits: Suzanne June G. Perante