{"id":197,"date":"2026-05-20T21:32:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/?p=197"},"modified":"2026-05-20T21:47:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:47:07","slug":"purple-gold-green-promise-and-a-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/purple-gold-green-promise-and-a-warning\/","title":{"rendered":"Purple gold, green promise \u2014 and a warning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Excerpted from a column piece by Cielito Habito, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Department of Agriculture data)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The world wants what the Philippines grows. The question is whether Filipino farmers will be the ones supplying it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ube exports jumped 20.4 percent last year to more than $3 million worth of product \u2014 nearly 1,700 metric tons \u2014 with the United States alone doubling its purchases from the previous year. Food writers are calling ube “the new matcha.” CNN declared a “purple reign” sweeping coffee shops in New York, bakeries in Sydney, and beauty retailers in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet domestic production is collapsing. The country produced 12,483 metric tons of ube last year \u2014 less than half the 30,074 metric tons recorded 20 years ago, and still below the 13,381 metric tons in 2024. The slide has been unbroken for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farmers and cooperatives know the reasons: unreliable yields, a six- to 12-month growth cycle, poor postharvest infrastructure, and thin market access. Climate change compounds all of it. What’s less forgivable is the policy failure on top: Congress cut the 2026 ube budget by 10 percent to a mere \u20b110 million \u2014 barely enough to make a dent in the planting materials the industry desperately needs. The Philippines is now importing ube from Vietnam, which along with China is scaling up production to seize the very market opening Filipino farmers created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same pattern is threatening two other high-value crops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Calamansi \u2014 the fourth most widely grown fruit in the country and one whose global supply the Philippines has historically dominated \u2014 is in a 43-percent production decline since 2010, from 188,300 metric tons down to 107,700 last year, even as export volumes of calamansi juice run between 160,000 and 190,000 metric tons annually. Vietnam is again watching and moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hass avocado is the newer opportunity, and here the news is better. Dole Philippines made its first export shipment to South Korea in late 2023, became the first Asian supplier to Japan in November 2024, and the Mindanao Development Authority is actively developing highland orchards. The global Hass avocado market was valued at between $11 and $20 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $26 billion by 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The broader picture is sobering for anyone in Philippine agriculture. The country earned $9.25 billion from farm exports in 2024 \u2014 a strong 19.3-percent increase, with fruit exports surging 35.6 percent. But Vietnam earned $62.5 billion, Thailand $52.2 billion, Indonesia $46.9 billion, and Malaysia $44.8 billion from the same sector. The gap is not a matter of what the land can produce. It is a matter of investment, infrastructure, and consistent government support that has repeatedly failed to materialize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farmers and cooperatives cannot wait for policy to catch up. Organizing around postharvest facilities, building direct market linkages, and pooling resources for quality planting materials are steps that don’t require a budget line in Congress. But sustained production growth \u2014 the kind that keeps Vietnam from cornering markets that belong to the Philippines \u2014 will require the government to match the urgency the market is already signaling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The demand is there. The crops are proven. What’s needed now is the will to supply them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Excerpted from a column piece by Cielito Habito, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Department of Agriculture data) The world wants what the Philippines grows. The question is whether Filipino farmers will be the ones supplying it. Ube exports jumped 20.4 percent last year to more than $3 million worth of product \u2014 nearly 1,700 metric tons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmnservicecoop.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}