LA TRINIDAD, Benguet: More than P1.2 billion worth of smuggled agricultural crops were seized and destroyed by the Bureau of Customs (BoC) and the Department of Agriculture (DA) in various anti-smuggling operations in the different ports around the country last year.

Benguet caretaker and Anti-Crime and Terrorism through Community Involvement and Support party-list Rep. Eric Yap disclosed that the huge volume of smuggled agricultural crops that were seized and destroyed by the concerned government agencies only shows that something is being done to curb the proliferation of smuggled vegetables in various markets that directly compete with locally produced ones, which is ruining the gains to uplift the status of the province’s vegetable industry.

Yap pointed out that what should be done by the BoC and the DA is to ensure that the cases being filed against identified consignees of the smuggled agricultural crops are air tight to qualify as economic sabotage to ensure their conviction for them to face the consequences of their illegal activities that tend to impact on the established sources of livelihood of the people of Benguet and some parts of Mountain Province and Ifugao being major producers of quality agricultural crops.

Yap claimed that his office is constantly monitoring the development of the government’s anti-smuggling campaign to ensure that erring consignees of smuggled agricultural crops will be apprehended and subsequently charged before the Justice department and the courts to send a clear message to their cohorts that the government means business in curbing the presence of smuggled vegetables that compete with locally produced ones in the various markets around the country.

Yap said he continues to closely monitor the updates on the government’s anti-smuggling campaign because it is greatly affecting the prevailing buying prices of locally produced vegetables that come from Benguet where the vegetable farmers are the ones suffering from the consequences of the unabated entry of smuggled agricultural crops.

Yap stipulated that it should be the interest of the vegetable farmers that should prevail and not the interest of the smugglers because locally produced vegetables are far the ones that help in providing sustainable sources of livelihood and economic activities of the province’s populace.

For the past several decades, Benguet has been the producer of more than 80 percent of the highland vegetables being sold in the different countries around the country.