The Department of Agriculture (DA) said it would intensify its production programming in the Cordillera region by providing timely and relevant market information to farmers so that they could come up with “rationalized” planting intentions.
This measure, DA-Cordillera Administrative Region Regional Director Cameron Odsey said, may avert the overproduction of some vegetables in the region, similar to what had happened recently.
“We’ve been encouraging farmers to do production programming—to produce only what is needed and demanded by the market. They should not overproduce so that prices would not fall,” Odsey told the BusinessMirror.
“We will intensify our dissemination of necessary information to our farmers so they would be properly guided on what and how much volume to produce to meet the market demand,” Odsey added.
Odsey explained that their regional office collects and collates monthly production data, which includes the type of commodities, production stage and volume planted, in every municipality.
This data set, which would be shared to other municipalities, Odsey added, would help farmers in other areas to identify what specific crop to plant so that they would not end up producing the same commodity, hence, resulting in oversupply.
“So now farmers would know what to do. If they see other farmers have planted cabbage, they would now reconsider if it would still be profitable to also plant cabbage,” he said.
Odsey said the DA has validated the reported oversupply of vegetables in Baguio and in Benguet Trading Post last week and estimated that the extent of losses was “negligible.”
“Only few farmers suffered losses. Based on our validation and interviews last Friday, only less than 10 farmers experienced losses,” he said.
Odsey explained that farm gate and wholesale prices of vegetables in Baguio decline after the Christmas season, which is considered as peak season, by 30 percent due to sudden drop in demand.
However, what happened recently to vegetable farmers was a confluence of events, according to Odsey.
First, farmers tried to recoup their losses from the devastation of typhoons Ompong and Rosita by planting immediately in mid-November. The planting condition then until late December was favorable which resulted in bountiful harvest, Odsey said.
However, Odsey added, this was followed by light rains towards the end of December that forced almost all farmers to immediately harvest their crops to avoid spoilage.
Another factor, Odsey said, was the impact of typhoon Usman in Visayas and Mindanao. Usman hindered the delivery of shipment of vegetables to Southern parts of the country due to road closures brought about by floods and land slides.
Nonetheless, Odsey said vegetable prices in the area would soon normalize and would even sustain increments in the following weeks.