Connecting with Pangasinan
By Secretary Manny Piñol
Lingayen, Pangasinan will be the next venue of the MinDA Fruits Festival with former congressman and now town mayor Leopoldo Bataoil hosting the first festival on September 7 and the second on September 14.
Mayor Bataoil personally asked me to help him stage the highly successful fruits festival in his town because of the request of his constituents for access to fresh fruits sold at lower prices.
Since Lingayen has no organised fruit vendors group yet, Mayor Bataoil said the fruits from Mindanao will be sold right in front of the municipal hall.
Fruit vendors of Lingayen will later be organised and asked to identify their coordinator so that after two stagings they will be directly linked to the Mindanao Fruit Farmers through their coordinators.
The first two Fruits Festival initiated by the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) were staged in Baguio City August 27 and September 1 with almost 80 metric tons of Durian, Mangosteen, Pomelo, Lanzones and Rambutan gobbled up in just a few hours after the opening of the sale on Session Road.
The MinDA Fruits Festival is aimed at opening markets for the fruits produced by farmers in Mindanao while at the same time allowing consumers in the Visayas and Luzon to have access to fresh and fairly priced fruits.
Other Fruit Festivals are also being lined up in Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Bulacan, Metro Manila, Cavite, Bicol and several cities in the Visayas, including Cebu, Iloilo, Bacolod, Tacloban, Catbalogan and Tagbilaran.
Mindanao Fruit Farmers are now being identified and organised into a federation with MinDA creating a digital database using the geotagging technology so that their location and the variety and volume of fruits they are producing could be validated.
After the staging of the Fruits Festival, a direct linkage between the Mindanao Fruit Farmers groups and the vendors groups in Baguio City was established allowing them to engage directly with MinDA intervention.
This template will be replicated in other areas with the MinDA Fruits Festival will be staged as well.
(First photo shows Mayor Bataoil and the organisers of the MinDA Fruits Festival preparing for the staging of the first fruits festival on September 7 in front of the Lingayen town Hall. Other photos show the Durian and Pomelo delivered in Baguio City).
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