National Vegetable Congress tackles Phl competitiveness:Asian free trade causes jitters among aggie stakeholders

By Carlito C. Dar

BAGUIO CITY – The upcoming ASEAN Economic Community 2015 wherein there will be free movement of goods, services, human resources and investment among ASEAN member countries is causing apprehension among agricultural stakeholders in the country.

To address this, more than 700 agricultural stakeholders from nationwide gathered at Crown Legacy Hotel here Nov. 21 and 22 for the 11th National Vegetable Congress.

Hosted by the province of Benguet in cooperation of the Department of Agriculture, the congress adopted the theme, “Now is the time of sharing towards global market competitiveness.”

It aims to gather vegetable industry stakeholders from the government and private sector to review and discuss the present situation and latest development on the country’s veggie industry.

Segfredo Serrano, DA Undersecretary for policy, planning, research and regulation talked on ASEAN free trade agreements the Philippines has entered into.

He disclosed programs of DA are now trying to adjust for 2015 including budgeting and appropriations to support the farming sector to be competitive.

He said it is the primary directive of Agriculture Sec. Prospero Alcala  to establish a roadmap for such purpose on benchmarking and value chain analysis especially on  the  country’s competitors so that the Agriculture Department will know what needs to be done.

“We are trying our best and we are moving quickly, but we need a lot of inputs from our stakeholders, which is why this Congress is very important,” he said.

Serrano cited need to strengthen the country’s regulatory system especially on border protection and quarantine  as smuggling poses more threats to the country’s vegetable farmers than legal inputs would be coming in.

           

“The country also needs to invest more on border protection and we hope that the reform on the Bureau of Customs will be a reality soon”, he added.

Benguet Gov. Nestor Fongwan cited importance of such congress in pushing for global competitiveness of the country’s vegetable industry.

“This congress is very important to all vegetable producing region/provinces, as it is high time that we sit down and plan. We are no longer competing with each other so we need to sit down and plan on how we can compete in the global market”, he said.

For Benguet which produces around 80 percent of the country’s vegetable production, Fongwan said that they already organized a farmers’ cooperative with  more than 2,000 members.

Through the cooperative, they plan and distribute their production so they can produce or match the  daily market demand.