Benguet Farmers continue to lose P2.5M daily due to illegal imports

March 17, 2022 JUST IN

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – “For nine months now, Benguet farmers are losing an estimate of P2.5 million daily because of illegally imported vegetables now flooding the market,” according to the League of Associations at the La Trinidad Vegetable Trading Post (LALTVTP), as they decry non-invitation to the Farmers’ Congress conducted recently.

The LALTVTP is the biggest agriculture-related organization in Benguet with around 10,000 members covering the different stakeholders of the vegetable trading industry based in La Trinidad, Benguet.

The LALTVTP in their social media page said, “Contrary to what this top Benguet official claims, the stakeholders of the La Trinidad Vegetable Trading Areas nor the farmers’ representative in our group were NOT INVITED at the Farmers’ Congress conducted yesterday (March 16) at the Provincial Capitol.”.

Please stop lying and fooling the Benguet people, they stressed.

Meanwhile, (as the farmers’ congress is ongoing) “TULOY TULOY PA DIN PO ANG PAGPASOK NG MGA SMUGGLED CARROTS and other veggies at the Manila markets and provinces” (smuggled carrots continue to flood the Manila markets and provinces unabated), They said.

“So, kung totoong may action against smuggling as claimed by these top Benguet officials during said Farmers Congress, BAKIT WALANG EPEKTO, BAKIT HINDI TUMITIGIL ANG SMUGGLING? HINDI NA NGA NABENTA MGA MEDIUM LOCAL CARROTS KANINANG UMAGA”, (If it were true that there was an action against smuggling as claimed by these Benguet officials during the said congress, how come we could not feel the effect, why hasn’t smuggling stopped? We still could not sell our medium local carrots this morning), they stressed.

Augusta Balanoy, spokesperson of the group in an interview said we feel so helpless that even our provincial government calls us liars despite pieces of evidence we have presented to them for the past months.

Before the Senate inquiry on vegetable, smuggling was conducted on December 2021, the provincial government has denied that there is vegetable smuggling and accused the organization to be using old recycled pictures in our social media pages and when we presented these as evidence to authorities as early as June 2021, Balanoy said.

“These smugglers are so brazen, despite our continuous complaints and with an ongoing Senate Inquiry on the matter, illegally imported vegetables specifically carrots continue to flood the market,” Balanoy said.

Per volume, she said, around 38M kilos of illegally imported carrots enter our markets monthly.

LALTVTP has recorded 40% less of orders in carrots in the past months.

“Smuggling never stopped for nine months now,” Balanoy stressed.

Meanwhile, Lawyer Richard Kilaan said, “illegal importation is just a tip of the iceberg with problems hounding our farmer, the very reason why we founded, Farmers for Lawyers, basically to help our farmers in particular and the agricultural sector in general”.

“We are now looking into the possibility of filing court cases against the different government offices for the inaction of this problem which was originally brought to their offices more than nine months ago,” Kilaan said.

Lawyers for Farmers (LFF) is a group composed of lawyers for farmers’ rights and legal initiatives. It is a group in defending the rights of farmers, with the advocacy to inform, educate and empower the farmers in today’s society.

LFF will assist the farmers in litigation processes, will regularly conduct legal awareness training, and will actively participate in policy intervention and campaigns for our farmers to benefit and have equal access to justice.

Earlier, during the Senate Inquiry, Sen. Panfilio Lacson said “Despite having what one study called the ‘eight toll gates of agricultural smuggling,’ why are there still too many smuggled goods that slip into our ports? I suspect what is involved is not interagency cooperation but interagency conspiracy.”