Filipino farmers are among the most undervalued in society. For them, making a living has meant facing up to such challenges as natural calamities, perennially low palay prices, and lack of resources in marketing their crops. In a bid to help farmers from Mindanao, local social enterprise Agrea is looking for buyers to purchase 6.4 tons of monggo.
Interested parties can send a message to Agrea’s Facebook page for more information on prices, logistics and availability.
This isn’t the first time when a bountiful harvest became a bane for farmers. Earlier this year, a video of a farmer disposing of a truckload of unsold carrots went viral. Last year, 70 tons of garlic were scheduled to be destroyed because of the lack of supply chain links between farmers and consumers. In 2018, ten tons of tomatoes were discarded in a Laguna landfill due to oversupply.
[READ: The rejected tomatoes issue is rooted in our country’s lack of local support]
Although supporting and buying local has become a mantra among consumers, a lot more needs to be done. Farmers, who produce the food on our table, end up hungry most of the time. There are seeds to buy, pesticides and fertilizers to stock up on, milling services to pay, warehouses to rent. Aside from buying their goods and promoting their products, why not support legislation that addresses their woes, like maybe farm subsidies and interest-free loans?
In the meantime, there’s that oversupply of monggo that needs to be moved.
Header image by Mochamad Arief on Pixabay
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