BENGUET, Philippines – The numbers no longer add up in the highland farms of Benguet province.

“Lugi amin (Everyone’s losing),” said trader Frank Maliones, capturing a crisis tightening its grip on farmers and traders: prices are falling even as costs climb as an offshoot of the war in the Middle East since late February that has disrupted oil supplies.

A five-ton truck of cabbage now fetches as little as P15,000 to P20,000, Maliones said in Ilocano. It’s far short of the P60,000 to P70,000 it takes to grow it, before a single sack is hauled down the mountain. 

Fertilizer alone has surged to about P3,000 per sack, while chicken dung – another input – costs P280, with roughly 70 sacks needed for a typical load.

“Expenses ti garden lang (It doesn’t include transportation of vegetables),” he said, adding that the farm inputs alone already eat up margins.

His account reflects a wider strain at the Benguet Agri-Pinoy Trading Center (BAPTC), where farmers and traders say falling prices, high transport costs, and supply imbalances are making it harder to bring produce down from the mountains.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. visited the province on Friday, April 17, to assess conditions, accompanied by Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr., Presidential Adviser for the Cordillera Antonio Tabora Jr., Benguet Governor Melchor Daguines Dicles, La Trinidad Mayor Roderick Awingan, and Benguet State University president Kenneth Laruan.

He went to Spot Trading Building 2, where post-harvest operations are carried out, inspected farm inputs and equipment for distribution to farmer cooperatives under the Department of Agriculture’s High Value Crops Program, and spoke with farmers and traders.

In a statement after the visit, Marcos acknowledged the disruption caused by rising fuel costs, particularly in transporting produce from the hinterlands.

“We were surprised that because of the increase in diesel prices, vegetables are no longer being brought down from the mountainous areas,” Marcos said, explaining that the government has since rolled out measures to ease the burden.

These include a temporary P10-per-liter fuel subsidy for trucks, the waiver of certain local government charges, and the suspension of toll fees for cargo trucks traveling from Benguet to Metro Manila. Truckers, he said, typically pay up to P3,000 per trip depending on vehicle size.

The government has also extended assistance through the Department of Labor and Employment, which provides temporary work to affected workers, including drivers and helpers in the agricultural supply chain.

Tiu-Laurel said the intervention followed consultations with farmers, traders, and truckers two weeks earlier.

“The bottomline: freight costs went up, farmgate prices went down, partly due to some overproduction late last year,” he said.

Among the immediate measures, the agriculture department would distribute seeds and fertilizer to reduce input costs for the next planting cycle. Transport support has also been arranged, including toll fee waivers along major expressways and fuel subsidies for different truck types.

Savings from these interventions, Tiu Laurel said, are expected to ease freight costs and ultimately benefit farmers.

Beyond policy, Marcos made a direct market intervention, with the government purchasing more than 20 tons of highland vegetables from BAPTC and the La Trinidad Vegetable Trading Post. The produce will be distributed to facilities in Metro Manila, including orphanages and jail facilities.

For Benguet farmers like those Maliones spoke for, the visit offered a chance to be heard. Whether relief arrives in time to match the scale of losses remains the bigger question. – Rappler.com