Benguet has been popularly known as the major producer of highland vegetables being sold around the country. Vegetable farming is the source of livelihood of more than 300,000 individuals from the different vegetable-producing communities and has provided sources of livelihood for tens of thousands of people from other provinces who came to Benguet to look for employment and other economic activities. Truly, vegetable farming has been the way of life of people in the province over the past several decades that have produced tens of thousands of professionals who are now gainfully employed locally and overseas.
The vegetable industry had been encountering numerous challenges in the past up to the present forcing concerned local governments and government agencies to work on appropriate comprehensive master development plans to ensure the survival of the industry that served as the major source of food on the table not only for residents but also for Filipinos in the different parts of the country.
The government’s entry into free trade agreements with our neighboring Asia-Pacific nations and with the World Trade Organization is one of the major threats to the sustainable growth of the vegetable industry because agricultural crops that cheaper and others which can substitute for local produce can now freely enter the country free of tariff and directly compete with locally produced ones that may inflict serious damage to the local inter-generational agriculture industry.
Another factor that is aggravating the effects of the entry of imported vegetables in the country is the unabated smuggling of similar agricultural crops from China that saturate the supply and tend to cause a drop in the prices of vegetables in the local markets. Traders have time and again claimed that if the prices of highland vegetables suddenly drop or the earlier orders that had been placed suddenly cancelled, there is the likely possibility that smuggled vegetables have flooded the market which is detrimental to earnings of the farmers because their produce will eventually end up being thrown into the ravines or composted as fertilizers for their next produce. This has been a regular experience in the industry but it seems that the government has no definite solution to the controversial issue that has greatly affected the province’s vegetable industry and nearly resulted to its natural death in the past.
What is surprising in the latest report of the Philippine Statistics Authority in the Cordillera on the contribution of the various sectors to the province’s economy is that it is now the service sector that is making waves in reviving the local economy from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Agriculture remains to be at the back seat in terms of its contribution to the provincial and regional economy that is why there might be a shift in the way of life of people in the province in the future. We learned that the emergence of ecotourism and agri-tourism has brought value added to the province’s local vegetable industry that might contribute in allowing the heavily impacted industry to survive and maintain its status as the province’s major economic driver amidst pressing challenges both locally and globally. The service sector will just simply compliment the agriculture industry once well managed and properly administered so that both industries can complement each other.
The service sector continues to thrive in the province because of the resilience of the agriculture industry stakeholders who are now trying to transform the industry by adding value to both the process and product which can rebirth the industry and make it robust. This way, all benefitting sectors can rejuvenate the old age vegetable industry. Further, the younger generations are now also trying to embrace the service industry within the agricultural sector as their alternative sources of income without compromising the state of the agriculture industry that sustained their education, and this seen in some of the micro-scale enterprises using the province’s agricultural produce that are processed into marketable products.
The shift of the province’s economy to the service sector will always be there because of the rapid expansion of businesses deviating from the traditional farming to other forms of economic activities that is now gaining headway in different parts of Benguet. Let us continue to work on such development while maintaining the province’s identity as the major producer of highland vegetables being sold all around the archipelago. Let us allow the said industries the thrive together because it provides variance in the conduct of economic activities that will provide sustainable sources of livelihood for the people and will expand through the upcoming generations. More importantly, the government must support these innovations in the industry and support micro and small scale industries and social enterprises that are locally agriculture-based. The variety of businesses in the province only shows that we are now opening our economy to other drivers that will provide decent employment and economic activities not only for the residents but also for the migrants who want to embrace the life in the countryside like Benguet.