![]() However, half a century of toiling the land to feed millions across the country is leading to the slow decimation of forest cover and the soil’s inevitable deterioration as farmers resort to chemical-heavy fertilizers to boost yields. Its annual production is at least 1.1 million metric tons, earning it the moniker of the “Salad Bowl of the Philippines.” Seated atop the Cordillera mountain range, the province of Benguet’s high altitude favors the production of such crops, also referred to as highland vegetables. From Manila, crops are shipped across the archipelago, meeting 80 percent of the country’s demand for semi-temperate vegetables like potato, cabbage, radish, chayote, carrot, lettuce, and broccoli. The volume of deliveries can triple around holidays like Christmas and Easter, when demand surges. These interventions have yet to gain momentum, but the upswing of local tourism, and the success of a local coffee farmer, have motivated some farmers to diversify their crops and plant crops alongside trees.īENGUET, Philippines - Every day, at least 1,500 metric tons of semi-temperate vegetables are trucked down from Benguet, a mountainous province in the northern Philippines, to depots called bagsakan in the country’s capital, Manila.Government agencies have proposed solutions including agroforestry, crop programming and organic farming aimed at limiting the heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides and preventing encroachment into forested areas.Soil quality has likewise declined over the decades because of heavy chemical use by farms gunning for high yields. Farms have expanded into forest areas and affected water supply.Centuries of growing highland vegetables to sustain the Philippines’ food supply has taken a toll on the farms in the Cordilleras, a mountainous region in the country’s north, which supplies 80% of vegetables in the whole archipelago.
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