The Effect of Vegetable Importation on the Vegetable Farmers of Benguet

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.