By Danilo P. Padua, PhD
During the first quarter of this 2026, Congressman Eric Yap filed House Bill 8405-An act establishing a vegetable processing plant in the province of Benguet and appropriating funds thereof. Shortly thereafter, he filed a complementary House Bill No. 8634 – An Act establishing the Benguet Agricultural Logistics and Transport Support Program To Assist Highland Vegetable Farmers in the Province of Benguet and Appropriating Funds therefor.
Both bills are now pending at the House committee on Agriculture and Food. The bills themselves, as filed by Cong Yap are really commendable.
The bills were filed in response to the “oversupply” of vegetables such as carrot, Chinese cabbage, potato and others.
Obviously, our local veggie farmers are good farmers as attested by these supposed to be perennial oversupply situations that happen from time to time..
Yes, many farmers have experienced losses due to such occurrences. Naturally, they have to be helped. That is why, the abovementioned bills are expected to be a real relief to the concerned farmers.
In his explanatory note of H.B. 8405, Cong Yap mentioned the inevitability of oversupply of vegetables thus, processing of the surplus should mitigate the problem.
In Yap’s estimation, the Bill should be able to address the relatively limited access to markets, reduce food waste, and enhance profitability of veggie farming. Obviously, he thinks that this will contribute to sustainable development of the aggie sector in Benguet.
According to him, the bill is designed to provide a long-term solution to the recurring agricultural oversupply in the region. It aims to convert surplus, unmarketable highland crops such as cabbage, wombok, and carrots into processed high value food production with an extended shelf-life. It also seeks to prevent farmers from having to discard their harvests during price collapses and supply gluts .
With the above, he has an earnest lea: immediate approval of the said bill.
By the premises of the bill and its purported objectives, it should really be a relief to vegetable farmers.
But is it really?
In the first place, I did not see any reference study that could be a concrete basis for the establishment of a big vegetable Processing Plant. What is really the volume of the surplus, and at what periods of the year are the surpluses occurring? There are also no specific overproduced vegetables at certain times. Because of these, there is always the danger of spending so much capital to a puny problem.
We do not want to have a similar case with that of a tomato processing plant in Ilocos Sur decades ago That plant was established to help farmers by buying and processing their oversupply produce. What happened was that, the touted oversupply was not even enough to supply the plant of even ½ of its capacity to process. And the oversupply period is only for a very short period, leaving the plant idle most part of the year. The tomato processing plant became a big white elephant, useless as it was envisioned to be.
Besides, if there is an oversupply here in Luzon for instance, other places in the country may lack supply of the same vegetable. So importation of the vegetable is a ready solution proffered by our food managers. It is something that we do not want happening.
In 2025, (or 2024?) we had supposed to be an “oversupply” of onion in Luzon. But when I was in BARRM during the same period of a plenty, one medium-sized onion was costing 5 pesos per piece!
Maybe the more prudent thing to do is to pinpoint other places where there is insufficient supply of an overproduced vegetable in CAR and ship our surplus there. It takes good planning for this. After all, in the explanatory note of Cong Yap, oversupply is inevitable and it is happening regularly.
Another thing that could be considered is by limiting the seed available in the market at certain time of the year when overproduction was regularly noted.
An oversupply situation will also affect other stakeholders such as those in the retail business side. This has to be taken into consideration.
Consider also this. The proposed Board of the Benguet Vegetable Processing Plant will be composed of around 17 selected people, each of them will receive emoluments probably on monthly basis. If each will receive 30K/month, it would be a drain to the coffers of the Plant.
I was once a member of the Board of Directors of a semi-government business entity with a net profit of more than PhP200 million annually-and we were only about 10-12. It can give away 3OK/mo. Fair. But for BVPP Board, it would be a messy affair.
Helping our concerned farmers should always be a paramount consideration but we need to have concrete data and relevant initial studies to back up any plan, especially when huge amount of capital money is to be involved. **
