Rotting away
Tons of tomatoes, rotting away because they have no takers in the market, have been disposed of at a Laguna landfill, while some will be used as animal feed. The tomatoes were also of a different variety from those processed as tomato sauce or paste. I assume they could not be used for ketchup as well. The tomatoes could no longer be bought by traders, even if the price per box tanked at P100. There was just an oversupply of the said variety of tomatoes.
I remember when the popularity of “lechon manok” exploded, where you could practically find someone selling at every corner. When demand started to shrink, shops shut down one by one, until only the few that we know now were left. The same can be said of the Tamiya Mini Four Wheel Drive craze, and the pearl tea fad. This is a textbook case of supply and demand. This is what the Department of Agriculture (DA) wants to teach farmers. The farmers should be taught to plant other crops, and not just tomatoes, like everyone else is doing. Perhaps tomatoes are easy to grow, so selling them would be quicker. But alas, a glut occurred, something the farmers did not anticipate. Just like the “lechon manok” situation. This is where the DA must come in. To guide farmers as to planting other crops like sitaw, kalabasa, and ampalaya. The DA will apparently provide the seeds.
Such is the state of agriculture in the country. There seems to be no guidance to the farmers, or no strict supervision of what the farmers are planting. If there were, then the tomato glut would not have occurred. Even with the typhoons, the harvest was just too much. The opposite could also happen, where a shortage occurs because not enough of a particular crop was planted, or was lost to a typhoon. Overfishing of a certain species can also happen especially in the absence of government regulation. I don’t think the government regulates the fishing of galunggong, causing us to export the said fish which is a staple of many Filipinos.
I get to watch shows like “Deadliest Catch” where crabs of different species have seasonal harvests in the Alaskan North, so the population can recover. They harvest one kind, then switch to another kind when the season ends. Even alligator hunting in the southern US is governed by regulation. The rationale is for the species to recover, for the younger ones to grow older before they are hunted and killed. There should be a similar system in place in the country, where the government obviously has to watch over the farmers and fishermen, who may not understand a seasonal approach to growing and harvesting, as well as rotating crops. The sea of red tomatoes in a landfill, an obvious waste, should be enough lesson to both the government and farmers on what not to do.
If only they could sell them to Buñol, Spain, for their La Tomatina festival. Or should we have one of our own? Wouldn’t you want to throw a tomato at certain people?
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