The Department of Agriculture (DA) joins the Philippine Food Festival at the Centre Communautaire de Joli Bois in Brussels, Belgium on April 2, 2023.

Now on its third year, the Philippine Food Festival serves as a venue to introduce and promote Philippine cuisine and delicacies to international community. It included home-cooked dishes that are popular in different regions in the Philippines.

This year, the festival organizers set up twenty (20) food kiosks for Asian stores as well some of the best high-value crops from the country that was being imported and distributed throughout Europe.

Some of the products that DA showcased were calamansi products, fresh mangoes, mango puree, organic coconut products, freeze-dried tropical fruits (mango, dragon fruit, banana, pineapple, coconut), mango and coconut chews. Emerging crops like ube, pili nuts, and banana (saba) were also featured.

Businesses in Belgium also took notice of the unique taste and quality of the champion and emerging agri commodities and expressed interest in the buying and selling of Philippine products.

Belgium is known for being a very good test market due to its size and demographics. It is a small country with many different nations. Brussels is an important cosmopolitan cell for testing new products due to the presence of the EU, NATO, and other international organizations. The country is also bordered by the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, and France. ###