Fresh ‘Baguio’ vegetables from Mindanao, anyone?

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – Last month, the Department of Agriculture’s disclosure that upscale grocery stores in the country have been importing large volumes of semi-temperate fresh vegetables raised a furor among upland farmers.

The imported vegetables included broccoli, lettuce, carrot, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, potato and mushroom crops which are grown in the upland areas of the country. They directly compete with local produce, especially from farmers’ fields in Benguet province. These institutional buyers reportedly prefer to source imported vegetables because they are superior in quality, arrive on schedule, and maintain their shelf life for weeks.

This situation can change, says Dr. Merl Menegay, agribusiness advisor of the USAID-funded Growth with Equity in Mindanao (GEM) program, which provides technical and logistical support to the region’s agriculture industries. Upland Filipino farmers, he said, can produce competitive quality vegetables if changes in production methods and transport technologies are initiated.

During the normal course of preparing and marketing vegetables from interior areas, quality, appearance, and shelf life deteriorate rapidly due to poor handling, tight packing, and adverse shipping conditions.

According to Dr. Menegay, this is particularly true for temperate climate vegetables which are higher valued, usually not consumed near where grown, and are shipped to distant markets.

"Each time vegetables are handled they are subjected to more damage and losses. Shipping vegetables in the tropical climate of the Philippines without the benefit of pre-cooling and refrigerated transport, also leads to rapid deterioration," he said. These adverse handling, packing, and transportation practices not only result in lower quality but also causes sizeable losses between the farm gate and final consumer.

Ideally, he pointed out, to ensure that temperate vegetables will reach consumers in their best shape, they should pass through an integrated cold chain that begins with pre-cooling in the field, then loading into refrigerated vans, and provision of a controlled environment all the way to a chef’s or family’s kitchen.

Consolidating resources

In Mindanao, the concerted efforts of a group of enterprising lettuce growers, lessors of refrigerated vans, providers of nestable plastic crates, and an institutional buyer have paved the way for the first commercial, agricultural cold chain for lettuce from Mindanao. This could chain is servicing Manila’s discriminating buyers of lettuce with high quality, fresh leafy greens from Mindanao.

Lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage crops are often referred to as "Baguio" vegetables because they are associated with the cool climate of Baguio. They are also at home in the cool, misty hills of Bukidnon province and other certain high altitude sites in southern Mindanao. In fact, the increasing levels of production in these areas have encouraged agribusiness entrepreneurs to find new markets for their semi-temperate vegetables.

Around the end of May of this year, a group of lettuce growers packed 2.5 tons of lettuce in nestable plastic crates and placed them in a reefer van for shipment to Manila from the Cagayan de Oro port. This trial shipment by sea replaced their previous practice of packing lettuce in cardboard boxes and sending them as air cargo because the rates for air freight were steadily increasing.

This initial trial shipment was the result of a unique form of collaboration between leading lettuce producers in Northern Mindanao, Cryo, San Miguel Plastic Packaging Inc. (SMPPI), and Blue Dairy Corp. The GEM Agribusiness Team and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) – Region 12 supported and monitored the entire process.

The group of lettuce growers was led by Green Haven Farm based in Impasugong, Bukidnon. Since their volume of the crop could only fill half of a 20-foot van, they convinced other lettuce growers in Bukidnon, such as Moriah, Friendly, and Valley Fresh Farms, to join this shipping and delivery arrangement.

All the producers had to work closely together to have a uniform quality of lettuce and schedule of deliveries to the reefer van. But, since lettuce in cardboard boxes could not be stacked high enough, there was a demand for nestable plastic crates which require a large initial investment.