Abstract:
The study was conducted to determine the effects of the vegetable importation on
the vegetable farmers of Benguet. Selection of the respondents was done using accidental
sampling in the vegetable trading outpost in La Trinidad Benguet of 30 farmers as the
respondents. Other data gathered were from the Provincial Agricultural Office of Benguet
and the Municipal Agricultural Office of La Trinidad to support the answers of the
respondents and the interview of some experts in the field.
Results show that there were two problems that are being faced by the farmers
with regards to the imported vegetables. First, the imported vegetables pull down the
price of the vegetable in the market to the point that it is far from the break-even point
price and farmers can not earn enough for their everyday expenses. Second, the imported
vegetables dominate almost all of the markets that are also produced in Benguet and
farmers play minimal role in the marketing of their product. Added to these, there is
another problem that was discovered during the study, the farmers’ inputs in the
vegetable production are all import-dependent by some large firms that leads to farm
inputs having a very high price. This becomes problematic, because with increasing farm
inputs, the total revenue that the farmers are earning is decreasing because of the pulling
down price of the imported vegetables.
As a recommendation, the government should implement programs that answer
to the real needs of farmers like financing and building of advanced technologies on post
harvest facilities and production of local genetic planting materials. More importantly,
the government should control the importation of vegetables and implement protectionist
policies that will ensure the welfare of our own local farmers.
