By Danilo P. Padua, PhD
In recent days, nay, in the past few months, andap has been in the news-print and broadcast. This is especially true in Benguet. Andap of course is a local term for frost.
As early as November last year, the occurrence of frost in a few of our vegetable areas had been reported in frost-prone areas such as Paoay, Atok, Benguet. This despite the relatively “high” temperature of 150C.
This frosting reached a peak last week when temperature in Baguio was a chilly 7.30C. At that temperature, Atok was practically at a freezing level of 4oC. You can just imagine that frost was really thick, like 2 cm. Fortunately, only a few areas were affected. That’s why the provincial agriculturist office of Benguet is saying that it did not affect the supply of vegetables from the province. Besides, they say, farmers already know what to do when frost occurs. They simply spray water on the plants in the morning to counter the chilling effect of crystallized water
Some enterprising vegetable dealers, however, used the weather malady to jack up prices. As of this time, frosting is not resulting in widespread damage of vegetable produce. Why? Aside from the fact that frost-affected sites constitute only about 1% of the total veggie areas, the vegetables being grown are tolerant to frost. These include crucifers such as cabbage, Chinese cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and radish. Other crops like carrot, lettuce, and spinach are also tolerant.
The ones easily affected by frost include potato, tomato, eggplant, squash, beans and peas. For potato, frost effect will not be heavy if tubers are already well developed. They will just be left in the field and harvested when the frost is gone.
When leaf temperature of the frost-tolerant crops drops below freezing point, the leaf is not easily damaged. They could recover in time. This is why when television shows a frosted vegetable farm, we should not be unduly alarmed. The general veggie supply in the market is not distorted unless there are other compelling reasons like landslides. We should show concern however to affected farmers, especially if they do not follow or don’t have the capacity to spray water as needed.
There are some other ways to protect the plants against frost. One is heating and another is production of smoke. Both of which could be done by burning (which is not a good practice).
It would be best to map areas that are really frost-prone so farmers will be advised what to plant or not to plant during the colder periods of the year. This should minimize losses. The PAGASA weather prediction system, which has improved tremendously in the last few years, could also be used to help farmers in their farming operations.
Whether it resulted in great damage to vegetable production or not, the occurrence of frost lately should be another compelling reason to really go for blast freezing and improved cold storage facilities, especially in Benguet.
Middle of last year, there were almost half a million tons of vegetables sitting at the La Trinidad Trading Post almost pleading to be bought. Reason? Vegetable trucks were not allowed to enter Divisoria, the main destination of Cordillera veggies, due to renovation, repair and cleaning activities there. If blast freezing and functional cold storage facilities are in place, losses of vegetable farmers will be minimized during such unforeseen events. We will not be at the mercy of what they are doing elsewhere.
Such facilities could also help farmers during onslaught of typhoons like the successive occurrences of typhoon Karen and Lawin October last year. Spike in vegetable prices will surely be prevented helping consumers in the process.
It must be remembered that we are now in an open market system in the ASEAN region. If necessary technology for production, postharvest and marketing are not given due course, we might be caught napping when the full force of free trade in the region will suddenly dawn on us. Besides, we can not take advantage of the various opportunities (currently available to us), to trade agricultural products to countries such as Japan, Korea and China without such technologies.**
