Saving the Rotting

One of the basic necessities of every human is food- nutritious, energizing, and abundant food- but here in the Philippines, food that's abundant and provides enough nutrition is becoming harder to secure, not just in our public markets, but from the roots it grew.

In Tublay, Benguet, a video captured farmers dumping truckloads of freshly harvested Chinese cabbages, green cabbages, and carrots along a mountain roadside and trenches, left to rot. "It breaks your heart to just see months of hard work all thrown away. When prices crash and produce rots in transit, you take a total loss." This message from a heartbroken farmer after throwing out fresh produce shows that our own farmers can produce vegetables for the country. Still, they cannot even afford transporting it because of low demands, neither can selling it. According to the Department of Agriculture (DA), over 5.8 tons of vegetables were lost due to transport from farm to market that lasted for two nights and two days, along with another truck of carrots heading to La Trinidad after continuous rain.

According to the Global FoodBanking Network and Rise Against Hunger Philippines (RAHP), 40% to 50% of all harvested fresh produce in the Philippines is lost or wasted across the supply chain every year. Over 1.2 million MT of palay, or unmilled rice, was lost to major climate events like El Niño and typhoons in a single production year, according to the DA; this data shows how much produce is wasted every year through low demand, natural events, and other causes.

To reduce the general losses not just for farmers in Benguet, but nationwide, we must give our local farmers more support instead of relying on imports outside our nation, build better roads from farm to market to reduce transport costs, and invest in cold storage, better farm equipment, and gear to make an impact for Philippine agriculture. However, some may argue that it takes more than just support, better infrastructure, and investing in better equipment to progress our Filipino farmers—they still have more obstacles to go through, many of which are natural disasters or climate events, like droughts and typhoons, bad irrigation, and insufficient manpower since profit in farming is becoming less common, leading to farmer attrition.

In order for farmer attrition to lessen and prevent it from happening, we must give them a reason to stay—and not just this generation, but also inviting more people to farm. Farmers deserve their dignity to be upheld by the government, provide bonuses for premium-grade harvests, conduct agricultural programs for newcomers, and fair pricing of their harvest according to demand fairly.

Ultimately, this isn't just about putting our attention to our losses—the Benguet loss, our decline in produce; this is about finding a way to put an end to the hunger crisis, not for the present, but for the future of agriculture in the Philippines, buy more of their produce than imports to show farmers we value their hard work, assisting in agricultural irrigation constructions.

Our farmers work tirelessly, from dawn to sundown, every day, every month, just to feed a growing nation, only for their hard work to be thrown away; so all this could be possible, one harvest at a time.