Meet our New Family Member

Bukid Buddies has gave birth to a new baby into this young family!
Meet CAB the Cabbage! :)

[ 1 syll. cab, ca-b ] The baby boy name Cab is pronounced as KA-EB. 

CAB in french means rope. In english slang, its a taxi cab! :) Cab's role in the family will be crucial. :) He will be our "rope" tying the farms and communities in this veggie chain..

He'll look for places where he can supply both needs.. healthy vegetables for households and distribution for the farmers' goods. :) Just like his english slang name stands for, he will be very mobile and moving around the farms and cities. You'll never know where he's heading next looking for opportunities and yes, even attending parties (with veggie menu of course!)

Spot him in his quests and yes, please welcome him into your homes! :) He'll bring you good and healthy food stuff! :)

Repolyo the Cabbage says "Welcome to Bukid Buddies!"

Cab the cabbage is looking for a buddy. Here at Bukid Buddies, we help Cab and all his cabbage friends to travel safely from the farm gate to your plate :-)

This helps farmers get a fair price for their produce, and helps YOU get the freshest food delivered direct to your door, the day it's picked - and cheaper than you could buy it at the market.

Click here for information on our fresh produce delivery service, the Farm-to-You service.

Click here for information on how we're helping farmers by providing access to modern food storage technology.

Click here for information on our volunteer program for Filipino and international visitors interested in agricultural development.

Or see below for more stories about Cab and his friends!

Getting the Veggie Habit!

Its been years, since I had grown so big from eating unhealthy foods.
5 years ago, my 120 pounds body went up to 160 pounds because of my unhealthy lifestyle. :(

Above Photo: (me in frontmost, with friends from Bangkok) these were the days I gained weight and felt so fat! 

It was until I found out about a "raw food diet" that my life started to change. Concerned about looking overweight, i decided to give this diet a try. The principle is simple, one must replace cooked meals with raw fruits and vegetables. I could not go for the 100% replacement as some of the teachers in the seminar were doing. Instead, I adopted the 50-50 principle in my eating, 50% fresh food and 50% cooked. 

Above Photo: teacher Daniw showing us how to make green smoothies. Everyday, I always make sure I have a dose of this super healthy drink. And its easy to prepare!

    veggies served that day: very live and vibrant, chinese cabbages!

Yes, you can make raw sushi veggie wraps with raw food diet!Vegetable eating is not actually boring! 

One of my favourite: cucumber in spices and sesame oil. I like its rachy-ness and tangy taste!

After months of integrating fresh veggies in my diet, I noticed my body became more lighter and yes even my mood too! Studies have proven that meat eaters are more aggressive compared to vegetable eaters, this is because you also ingest the stress hormones that animals release when they are about to be killed (gruesome, indeed). Although, I have to be honest, I still eat meat for protein and social purposes, but I always make sure that my veggies dominates my plate more. :) 

30 pounds after! Now I feel light and happy! haha.. Thanks to my veggies!

One challenge I had with this diet though, was making sure my veggies are free from deadly pesticides since I eat them fresh all the time. I can't imagine myself trying to live a healthy life but jeopardising everything by ingesting those harmful chemicals! Good thing, my friends Ben and Emete introduced me to this Bukid Buddies group who delivers fresh and organic vegetables right at my doorstep. Isn't amazing?? :) And what's more amazing about them is they get all their produce from farmers in rural areas who don't have accessed to market. Think about eating with a cause! :) 

These women farmers of Bukid Buddies are preparing the day's harvest for delivery. :)

Fresh and Organic veggies packed and wrapped in banana leaves right at my doorstep! 

If you would like to eat healthy and integrate raw food diet more into your eating, partner up with Bukid Buddies to help you get the freshest veggies. They have very good customer service too which I like. :) Click this link Bukid Buddies for details about their packages and services. :)

Ok, enough blogging for now.. my live lovely food is waiting! Hope you'll eat more healthy too!

Vegetable Salad with peanuts is love! :)

 

My veggie smoothie making me refreshed and nourished! So easy to prepare.. just blend banana with any greens and add honey! viola, a healthy banana veggie shake! :)

Thank you for reading! 

The voice of the next generation

Dionie Baucas is 32 years old. A member of the Igorot people from the northern Philippine island of Luzon. His small farm in the province of Benguet produces potatoes, Baguio beans, peas, strawberries, cabbage, lettuce, and carrots. Dionie was only 23 when his father died. As the oldest of five children, he was expected to take over the running of the farm.

Dionie (left) with his uncle, Amado.

"Although I'd worked on the farm my whole life, I felt totally out of my depth" he says now.

"I didn't want to be a farmer forever. To be honest, I even felt ashamed of being a farmer. I dreamed that one day I'd move to the city and become successful. Suddenly, I had to stop dreaming and start thinking about how to do the right thing by my family."

Dionie's feelings were similar to those of many young farmers in the Philippines, given the low status of farming in that country. "My father was poor, my grandfather was poor. I couldn't see myself doing anything other than taking that same path."

Dionie grows a range of crops including strawberries, beans and carrots.

But since that uncertain time nine years ago, both Dionie's situation and his outlook on life have changed significantly. He now has a wife and two young children, and he's much more positive about their future - thanks to his involvement with Bukkid Buddies.

"I remember seeing the Bukid Buddies stall at our local market here in Benguet" he recounts. "I was suspicious about them at first. They were talking about their subscription service, where they would transport produce from our farms directly to Manila and deliver it directly to people's houses there. They talked about cutting out the middleman and giving us farmers a better deal - it sounded good but we worried there was some trap in it for us."

"I sold double what I'd expected in those first months."

Building trust was a slow process. Bukid Buddies offered to guarantee farmers their first three months of income from using the service, regardless of how much product was actually sold. This was enough to get a small group of farmers on board - including Dionie. In the end, they didn't need the guarantee."I sold close to double what I'd expected in those first months" he says, "much more than what I could have sold in the local markets. I turned out, if you offer city people fresh fruit and vegetables at a good price, there's a lot of demand for that!"

The drive from Benguet to Metro Manila takes about six hours. Too far for small operators like Dionie to travel, meaning they couldn't hope to tap that huge market without relying on middlemen, who would take too much of the profit. That was the big difference made by the Farm-to-You service. Using a middleman, Dionie might sell a cabbage for 3 pesos, but it would be sold on at 25 pesos. With Bukid Buddies, subscribers can buy that same cabbage for 20 pesos, and half of that goes back to Dionie. It's a better deal at both ends.

With the extra income coming in, Dionie is making plans to expand his farm. "I feel differently about farming now" he says, "and I think my children will too."

A Day At The Farmer's Market

A farmer's market is a retail market where the consumers directly have the access to buy the vegetables from the farmers. The market typically is set with tables, booths and stands. This type of business module comes with lot of advantages such as less transport, less handling, less refrigerators and less time in storage.

Manila is the biggest city in Philippine and to reach the city market and sell the produce , the farmers have to go all the way from their regional cities. The farmers tend to sell directly as the direct selling reduces the cost of selling. It also increases the revenue for them. By selling in the outdoor market generates the extra cost of commercialization by selling to large food processing firms.

Therefore, the farmers prefer reaching Manila to retain the maximum profits for the efforts they invested. Directly selling to the consumer is also profited with identifying the consumer’s gesture when they get a better quality and transparency than the vegetables available at the supermarkets

Following a Benguet vegetable farmer to Manila where all vegetable stake holders are met, there are some interesting facts which can be observed. There were established units for undertaking all kind of market intelligence and monitoring activities to ensure all the members of the vegetable industry are committing a fair trade.

The famous vegetation selling by all farmers across the country includes cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, carrots, turnips, radish, cucumber, celery, spinach and some more, these vegetables are known peculiar in the Pilipino market.

We also look for suggestions and feedbacks for how we can improve the farmers storage facilities and packaging products in Philippines, at the same time helping the farmers through our social enterprise.

The video below shows how farmer hungry for change of better packaging solutions. We Bukid Buddies are on the right track to create social enterprise to supports these disadvantage farmers for a better solution of storing and packaging.

 The video shown why the farmer want better packaging and storage products 

The Farmer’s Story

The Philippines has the most traditional farming history compared to other countries. Most farmers follow their ancestors’ way of producing and selling their harvest. However, when it comes to the rules, those were loop-holed and the influential people who owned a large share of the traditional market initiated major discrepancies.

A poor farmer named Mr. Engilian established a true story how a farmer from bottom can reach the sky, being a low range farmer Mr.Engilian farmed more than 4 varieties a year and due to transport woes he couldn’t establish the right market. However, later he was able to cut out middle men’s cost by making contracts directly with consumer where he made a fortune from the deal.

Challenges

Most famers are losing their businesses because of the middle men. They purchase the farmers stock for very less and sell them in the consumer market with almost 5 times bigger than the price they offered to farmers.

The problem with Philippine farming is, it is associated with poverty, the young generation is not showing much interest in farming as there are other easy ways of earning money .Moreover, no social status can be obtained. Therefore, the youth is running away from the farming.

Protecting farmers from Bukid Buddies perspective

It is necessary that the country’s administration should provide adequate transport facilities to farmers or buy from farmers making justice to producer. Then the vegetables are not rotten and price is also considerably in reach of the common man. 

In order to resurrect the previous image of Filipino farmer, there should be methods of developing the farming and pumping those in subsidies to the farmers . it is also required to provide adequate transportation to shuffle the vegetation to the consumer market and make sure farmer is earning the reasonable share of the transaction.

This will improve the standards of the farmers and their image which can attract the young people into farming. There are lot of potential business investors who look for investing in farming industry. Therefore, making farming profitable will encourage these people to come forward and take farming as a profession. 

Bukkid Buddies will make social investments to support the farming communities in the Philippine by providing storage facilities and green packaging materials for farming products. The profits generating from the selling our products will use for social purpose. Thereby, we aim to help disadvantage farmers to protect their crops and other farming products.

Bukkid Buddies will collaborate with the environmental agencies and entrepreneurs in Philippine to promote and market the products which we about to introduce for protecting and saving farmers produce.

Experience the excellence of fresh food consumption

The Cabbage Story of Filipino Farmers

The major cabbage farming comes from the island of Benguet where the tribes are collectively known as Igorot. They are the primary tribes involved in cabbage farming, The Ibaloi in the Southeast and the Kankanaey in the Northwest, are the dominant tribes of Benguet, During the year 2007, Benguet suffered a huge crop damage due to freezing temperature which reached as low as 7 Celsius and even lower in some areas and the majority of cabbage farms damaged due to this effect. This brought a huge financial impact on the farmers’ lives.

Even in the terms of a good cultivation the farmers are nowhere considered financially strong to transport the stock to the business place to sell the goods. 

A major cabbage farming field in the island of Bennett

Moreover, most of the farmers as listed in the census are transporting the cabbage harvest through bicycles and carts. They pack the harvest in plastic bags.

During this irregular way of transporting, majority of the fresh produce get spoiled and destroyed by the time they reach the market. 

Further, when there is a party in the middle before the harvest reached to the market, they tend to rob the farmer by offering cheaper price and getting profits.

Bukid Buddies established as a social enterprise to protect the farmers and their fresh produce. Our main focus as Bukid Buddies is to introduce proper storage facilities as well as durable packaging.

Thereby we aim to avoid the harvest getting spoiled and damaged. Further, we help farmers to provide fresh and quality products to the market keeping the demand in the market for their products.

Not only that but also, we expect to promote quality products and encourage entrepreneurs to pay more to the farmers directly and preventing the parties in the middle who are taking advantage of the farmers.

Through Bukid Buddies SE business in Philippine as our core business strategy, we are here to support the farmers from the Igorot tribes. We help them in providing assistance in form of farm inputs, setting up storage facilities and enabling them to protect their farms products.

This will inevitably generate more revenue to the farmers as well as the entrepreneur for our social goal. Thereby, our service will be in demand and will generate more revenue to the enterprise.