Benguet’s vegetable farmers wary of free trade
28 December 2006
Benguet’s vegetable farmers wary of free trade
By Delmar Cariño
Inquirer
LA TRINIDAD, Benguet — The government’s move to liberalize imports, including vegetables, is expected to meet fierce resistance from farmers in the province, who all fear that the policy will spell doom for the local vegetable industry.
Jose Andiso Sr., president of the Benguet Farmers Federation Inc. (BFFI), said the move to lower tariffs and remove import quotas to give foreign vegetables wider access to the local market had become a bitter pill to swallow.
The farmers, he said, were willing to leave their farms and protest.
The pest risk analysis (PRA) for Chinese carrots—the first vegetable supposed to enjoy local market access under a bilateral trade pact that the country signed with China—appeared to be the test case of the farmers’ resolve to junk free trade.
The PRA is a disease and pest management system for imported vegetables that should be approved by vegetable industry stakeholders before it is incorporated in a protocol on quarantine conditions for vegetable importation.
Since 2004, PRA consultations on carrots were met with the farmers’ refusal to view the PRA as a scientific measure to protect the local vegetable industry from foreign pests and diseases.
During a nationwide consultation for stakeholders of the carrot trade on Dec. 6 in Quezon City, the farmers said they would protest any move to allow carrot importation.
Chinese carrots were the first vegetables that underwent a PRA.
The PRA’s approval would pave way for other PRAs to be conducted on nine other vegetables China wanted to sell to the country—potatoes, ginger, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, lotus root, sweet pea, kalian tsai (a type of pechay) and celery.
Jerome Bunyi, a World Trade Organization (WTO) expert in the Department of Agriculture’s policy research and services division, said the PRA must be understood in the context of free trade and globalization.
"It is a mechanism designed to avert the unabated entry of volumes of foreign vegetables into the local markets," he said.
The country’s trade officials signed in April 2004 the early harvest program (EHP) under the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation of Southeast Asian Nations and the People’s Republic of China.
The cooperation, which aimed to establish a China-Asean free trade zone by 2010, wanted to give members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations low tariff entry privileges for its products to China in preparation for a full free trade system on condition that Asean markets open their markets to Chinese products.
Former trade secretary Juan Santos said the Philippine-China EHP covered 209 tariff lines that included marine, animal and plant products.
The farmers, however, viewed the signing of the EHP as hasty and adverse to the local vegetable industry.
"We were not consulted on this EHP. It was as if our officials had sold us," said farmer Bernard Paleng of Kibungan town.
Patricio Ananayo, head of the regional Department of Agriculture’s agribusiness marketing and assistance services, said the Cordillera would stand to lose P5.28 billion worth of carrots a year if Chinese carrots will enter the market.
