FOR 35 YEARS, Margarita Rola and her husband, Juanito, would set up makeshift stalls at the public market in Aguilar town in Pangasinan province three times a week to sell tomatoes and bell peppers harvested from their garden in the upland tribal community of Mapita in Barangay Laoag. They would hitch on cramped passenger jeepneys or trucks that transported the produce of other farmers from their village for the one-hour ride to town. But on their way back, the Rolas would often hike uphill for four to five hours, most of the time carrying the tomatoes and bell peppers that were not bought. The village, where some 1,000 indigenous residents belonging to the Kankanaey, Ibaloy and Bago tribes had settled in the 1960s, is nestled in a 496-hectare rolling terrain of the Zambales mountain range, about 15 kilometers from the town. The villagers till some 150 hectares of land surrounding the settlement, planting rice, corn, vegetables and root crops. “It was very hard for us then,” said Rola, 57. “People in the market would buy our produce for P2 or P3 a kilo, and we still had to take home what we were not able to sell. We earned barely enough for us to buy our basic needs for the day.” But in 2011, Rola and 23 other vegetable farmers in the village stopped setting up makeshift stalls at the market. In January that year, they boarded a rented truck to deliver their harvest to the Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC) Read More …
