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.