Cojuangco farm products give new face to Negros

There’s more to Negros Occidental than just sugar. These days, it also produces fruits, nuts, vegetables and flowers in commercial quantities, thanks to an agricultural diversification project launched 13 years ago by Eduardo Cojuangco Jr.

Cojuangco converted 4,800 hectares of his landholdings into non-traditional, high-value crops such as fruits, vegetables and flowers.

As part of the ongoing Pana-ad Sa Negros festival which runs from March 29 to April 5 in Bacolod City, ECJ and Sons Agricultural Enterprises, Inc. will mount a mini-pavilion of the new agricultural products of Negros Occidental.

These will include fresh fruits like mango, banana, green macopa, chilia and jackfruit, vegetables like lettuce and parsley and flowers like hydraengeas and cattleyas. Also to be displayed at the processed and preserved forms of these fruits, mango jam, chili sauces, banana pastilles and chips and the latest sensation from the farm’s kitchen — durian chips.

While durian chips are also produced in other countries where the fruit is grown, ECJ and Sons is the first Filipino company to bring this kind of product to the market, says its general manager Ponchit Ponce Enrile.