Veggies to waste? Benguet farmers dump excess crops as buyers run out

Benguet farmers dump Chinese cabbage and carrots as prices tumble, highlighting the need for better ways to process surplus vegetables and protect farm incomes.

Benguet farmers are once again throwing away vegetables because there are not enough buyers. But the recurring scenes of discarded harvests also highlight a problem beyond oversupply: farmers have few ways to turn excess harvests into income.

Farmers in Tublay in Benguet recently dumped Chinese cabbage and carrots after prices fell and buyers became scarce, while bringing their harvest to La Trinidad would only add to their transportation costs.

Most blame the importation of produce, leaving local farmers with fewer customers in an already small and struggling market.

But some of the vegetables being dumped do not necessarily have to be sold as raw produce.

The Philippine Vegetable Industry Roadmap notes that Chinese cabbage and carrots can be processed into products such as kimchi, carrot cake, carrot juice and vegetable noodles. Vegetables can also be dried, frozen or preserved for other markets.

Benguet State University has also developed processing technologies and trained farmers in processing surplus carrots, cabbage, broccoli and beans, including vacuum-fried products, as alternatives when farmgate prices fall.

In a training program in May, BSU taught farmers how to make kimchi, sauerkraut, vacuum-fried cabbage chips and vegetable crackers, showing how processing can give farmers another way to earn when fresh markets are saturated.

However, that does not mean farmers can immediately start making packaged food on their own. Processing requires equipment, food safety training, packaging, financing, and access to buyers.

The government has already invested in this approach, including a ₱20-million food processing facility in Benguet to train farmers in turning their harvests into higher-value products, as well as a separate packaging and processing facility at the Benguet Agri-Pinoy Trading Center.

But the latest vegetable dumping suggests that these efforts have yet to reach the scale needed to protect farmers when fresh produce prices collapse.

What is needed is a system that kicks in before vegetables are dumped, with farmers able to bring surplus crops to accessible processing facilities, backed by financing, training and buyers for the finished products. 

Otherwise, processing will remain a promising alternative on paper while farmers continue to bear the cost when the fresh market turns its back on their harvests.

A vegetable surplus should be a problem of what to make from it, not where to dump it.

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