Postharvest – To Make 5Ps For The New PH DA Under Secretary Of Agriculture William Dar!

 

Certainly, the Plant, Plant, Plant Program, 4Ps, of the PH DA under Secretary of Agriculture William Dar is more than important: it is indispensable.

We forgot another P.

Now, when you plant, plant, plant – you produce. And we all forgot what happens, or should happen, when we produce. There is a missing P!

Postharvest.

I am an alumnus of UP Los Baños; I was working as Chief Information Officer of the Forest Research Institute when the Postharvest Horticulture Training & Research Center, PHTRC, was set up in 1977 via the ASEAN-Australian Economic Cooperation Program. (Who was PH President when the PHTRC was established? My favorite Bad-Boy-Best President, FM.)

Even I, an alumnus of UPCA, now UPLB, have forgotten this 43-year old very important part, VIP, of my University – we forget what is not always intruding into our sight, VIP or not.

The PHTRC is a unit of the College of Agriculture & Food Science, CAFS, of UP Los Baños. Note that the old CA has become CAFS – it has to be. You cannot practice agriculture without producing food! And you have to handle food right, right?

Postharvest has something to do with the “oversupply” of farm produce coming from anywhere in the Philippines. One example: On 10 January 2019, farmers in the Cordillera Administrative Region “were forced to dispose of their vegetables due to oversupply and lack of means to transport the harvest to market[1],” as reported by Reicelene Joy N Ignacio (“DA To Compensate Cordillera Farmers For Dumped Crops,” BusinessWorld Online). Certainly not an isolated case. That happened 18 months ago, and even I have hardly thought about how to prevent that from happening again.

I should have been the last person to forget postharvest. My daughter Daphne Cassandra works as a Research Associate at the PHTRC of UPLB. She has gone many places in the Philippines for the sake of improving postharvest produce of PH vegetables and fruits. I edited the English language text at late 2019 of the Center’s “Primer On Postharvest Handling Of Perishable Crops,” 93 pages, authored by OK Bautista, AL Acedo Jr & AC Castro (above is the cover photo of that brochure). Sometimes we forget what is right in front of our noses.

So now I am recommending that our Secretary of Agriculture, who has a PhD in Horticulture from UP Los Baños, 1987, include a DA budget for current postharvest handling of farm produce – as well as in the next year’s budget. How about P3 billion for new PHTRC buildings and facilities at UP Los Baños, additional courses and staff, and an information center dedicated to postharvest handling, including digital trainings and exchanges?

The harvests we save are our own!

We must make good use of produce before they become oversupplies – how about processing vegetables and fruits for the export markets?

Whether the farm produce are for PH consumers or any exports, until they have contributed their hidden wealths to human bodies, may our fresh perishable products not perish from the Earth!@517

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[1]https://www.bworldonline.com/da-to-compensate-cordillera-farmers-for-dumped-crops/