I was slicing tomatoes for dinner when I remembered the news about farmers from a northern province lamenting over the glut in this nightshade. I could not even imagine how many tomatoes made up 260,000 kilograms, which is how much in excess there was of the produce!
No one is buying them, or at least wants to purchase in bulk so they can be taken off the hands of farmers and converted into what it was intended to be: income.
Several things are racing inside my head. All because of tomatoes.
First off, what a WASTE! Tons of a vegetable (or fruit, which it is) just being dumped while still perfectly edible. They were already being given away but neighbors could only take in so much. And with no traders interested to buy them for distribution, farmers didn't have enough space to hold them for long.
So workers would scoop the nightshades from mounds piled all around then toss these down a ravine.
To me, that is just a sin! There are so many things you can do with tomatoes. You can eat them raw or cooked, on their own, as sauce, a side dish, drink it, and maybe with a lot of creativity and courage, even as dessert.
And to watch them being just abandoned and left to rot breaks my heart. With so many people going hungry, scrounging for something to fill their stomachs daily, yet here are tons of a vegetable so nutritious and versatile just going to waste.
We love making homemade salsa. And that entails lots of tomatoes. Sometimes, I have to rein myself in when tomatoes are expensive. And it is tiring to dice a kilo or so of them. To dice 10 kilos would probably leave me with my hand semi-paralyzed from overwork, but wow, it would be cool to see mounds and mounds of diced tomatoes, ready to be mixed with red onions, cilantro, lemon juice, salt and pepper flakes.
I also make a tomato side-dish made simply with garlic, onions, salt, pepper, fish sauce, brown sugar, and egg. When cooked properly, you taste sweet, sour, and salty all at the same time.
Ketchup (or catsup) is made from tomatoes, and who doesn't like red pasta sauce? How about sun-dried tomatoes? The possibilities are endless really.
So.... why is no one teaching or training these farmers to add value to their produce and move from merely selling it as is to some other product that consumers would just as easily patronize?
Isn't that sad? Yes, it will entail costs to put up a processing plant, however simple, but the investment will surely be worth it given the proper marketing and distribution support.
It doesn't even have to be a solo venture, but a cooperative effort among farmers so they can all benefit and there will be minimal wastage after harvest.
I totally understand that to add value to one product will require additional resources, which farmers may not even have access to considering how limited their incomes are.
And that's where government and private support will truly be invaluable. Sometimes, the initial push is all they need, and with proper guidance from experts, it could go a long way to boost the confidence of farmers long neglected despite the vital role they play in our country's food sufficiency effort.
Also lamentable is that many farmers have not upgraded their knowledge when it comes to farming, including being able to project how much they need to produce of a crop per planting season, and to have some backup plan in case of an oversupply. The most practical is to learn new ways of preserving or producing value-added products.
It's a shame that with so many innovations in cooking and food production, Filipino farmers are still way behind when it comes to upgrading their skills and know-how to further improve their income. This is especially essentially because the farmgate price of many crops are not increasing due to competition from imports and they're often at the mercy of middlemen.
This is the second time I've seen and read about tomatoes being thrown away due to oversupply. And how I wish I had access to them, or could buy as much to turn them into delicious dishes that I can enjoy, share, or even sell.
My prayer is that proper support is made available to these farmers and there will be no more wasting of crops in the future.
Lead image is original; other images courtesy of GMA News (Source)
Good post.