Agriculture Secretary and Cabinet Secretary for Regional Development and Security (CORDS)-CAR William Dar led the groundbreaking ceremony of the P40 million-worth of vegetable packaging and processing facility inside the Benguet Agri-Pinoy Trading Center in La Trinidad, Benguet on December 22, 2020.
“The rationale of having this food processing facility, ayaw natin na mangyari muli na iyong excess ay matatapon lang. We still want to convert to value-added products,” said Secretary Dar explaining how through the facility, unsold or wasted vegetables, especially at times of low prices, will be absorbed.
The facility includes both the facility and the necessary equipment for packaging and processing.
Department of Agriculture-CAR OIC-Regional Executive Director Cameron Odsey said that the facility will complement the DA-funded processing facility in Benguet State University (BSU) amounting to P20 million.
“The processing facility at BAPTC will focus on the initial processing activities such as washing and trimming while the more complicated processing activities such as juicing is for the BSU processing facility to work on,” Odsey said.
Secretary Dar said urged the region to use this work-of-the-art packaging facility and promote it for value addition.
“One objective would be to have a packaging innovation unit that would continue to promote and introduce packaging materials that are relevant in showcasing new technology and show it to the people,” he said.
The processing aspect would focus on the ready-to-cook vegetables which are accordingly, common to Western countries.
The DA chief also announced that the way forward for the BAPTC is to become a corporation among the stakeholders who are presently members of the BAPTC project steering board.
The BAPTC was also given a P40 million seed capital to be downloaded to the BSU as its fund manager. The capital will be used to purchase unsold vegetables that were traded in the Center at the end of the day to prevent possible wastage and income losses, especially to the farmers. ### (DA-CAR)
