Legal veggie importations minimal — BPI

The controversy over salad vegetables is getting hotter each day because of issues on their importation.

The real issue is smuggling, not legal importation. And this is what the Bureau of Plant Industry’s Plant Quarantine Service (BPI-PQS) and even the whole bureaucracy abhor as the agency stands pat on its efforts to help the farmers, not the importers. PQS has no police power to run after the smugglers.

BPI director Blo Umpar Adiong said the truth is legal importation — those covered by import permits which the BPI issues — is actually going down and has not reached one ton or a fraction of what has been reported in the media.

Citing reports from the PQS, Adiong said legal importation from January to September 2000 was pegged at 875,166 kilograms, which went down to 670,794 kilograms during the same period in 2001.

Legal vegetable importation during the same period this year went down to 518,221 kilograms.

Vegetables imported were ginger, broccoli, broccoli leaves, cauliflower, celery, carrots, cabbage, potato and lettuce. Majority of these imports were done via airfreight due to the small volume and the advantage of having longer shelf life, Adiong said.

Last year, Adiong said production of normally legally imported vegetables reached 164,164.02 metric tons.

The breakdown, based on figures from the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics: ginger — 23,424 metric tons; broccoli — 1,607 MT; cauliflower — 12,234 MT; celery — 3,530 MT; carrots — 33,767 MT; and cabbage — 89,536 MT.

Only 0.51 percent of these crops were legally imported last year, but imports excluded ginger and cabbage.

Imported last year were 173.72 MT of broccoli; 47 MT of broccoli leaves, which the country does not produce; 41.64 MT of cauliflower; 33.21 MT of celery; 5.43 MT of carrots; 215 MT of potato; and 324.97 MT of a lettuce variety which the country does not produce.

Adiong said the country legally imports only when the crop is not available in the country and there is a great demand for it in the special market.

For instance, while the Cordillera highlands produce broccoli, cauliflower, celery and lettuce, the importers’ clients demand the Romaine and Iceberg varieties of lettuce.

Broccoli, cauliflower and celery used by the special markets — restaurants, hotels, airlines, catering services and food industries — are of the same variety the Cordillera produces but of better quality because of their freshness and crispiness.

What are flooding the local market today are the smuggled vegetables, which the BPI said it has no control of.