By YVETTE TAN The fast pace at which technology develops means that many industries are keen on harnessing its potential. Agriculture is no different, as consolidators race to link farmers directly to consumers, bypassing the string of middlemen usually needed to get food from the field to the...
AVANT GARDENER Last week, I wrote about how I went on vacation to Taiwan fully intending to detach from work, but ended up appreciating their agriculture industry and mulling over ours anyway. Now I’d like to focus on the star of my trip: the roasted sweetpotato sold in convenience stores across...
By YVETTE TAN After a decade, the Philippines is once again exporting fresh mangoes to Australia. The initial shipment of 1,500 kilograms of Carabao mangoes left the Philippine Airlines (PAL) Cargo Terminal on September 6, 2023. After a decade, the Philippines is once again exporting...
AVANT GARDENER I just returned from a trip to Taiwan. This was supposed to be a vacation, so I vowed not to think of work during my stay. Of course, this was impossible as I, as a human being, needed to eat, and of course, what we eat is grown, caught, or foraged by farmers and fishers. ...
MUMshroom’s products, among them, mushroom chips, gourmet bottles in savory variants, chili garlic mushroom paste, pickled mushroom, fritters/ kropek. The Covid-19 pandemic was a traumatic global event, bringing the whole world to a halt as a virus threatened humanity. But despite the many...
AVANT GARDENER I visited Bukid Amara in Lucban, Quezon, a popular vegetable and flower farm among tourists and farmers. The 2.5-hectare farm is a sight to behold. The first thing that catches the eye is a field of different types of flowers that stretch out from the farm entrance toward a...
Petunias are beautiful flowers that are easy to care for. Diego Roxas, the current Spokesperson for the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), spent the pandemic growing and selling petunias, and continues to do so on the side. READ: Putting passion into motion: How a young man’s childhood...
AVANT GARDENER Grace Pascual-Holganza, a corporate accountant by trade, is the owner of Mumshroom, a company that sells products such as chips, patties, and sisig made from white oyster mushrooms cultivated on her family farm in Nueva Ecija. Though she technically started Mumshroom in 2018, just...
There’s a quote attributed to Mark Twain that says, “Find a job you like doing and you will never have to work a day in your life.” In Jose Diego Roxas’ case, it was more about finding work within his passion, which is agriculture, and learning to pivot when it best suited him. At 26...
AVANT GARDENER Looks like we may or may not have a rice shortage, depending on who you talk to. The Manila Bulletin reported in the beginning of the month (Aug. 1, 2023) that the country has “enough supply of rice that would last for a little more than one month,” specifically 39 days’ worth...
AVANT GARDENER What does it mean to work in agriculture? To most people, working in agriculture means farming or fishing, and then only specifically just the planting and harvesting part or just the fishing part. Folks who actually work in the agriculture industry know that this is not the case....
AVANT GARDENER I’m in the middle of writing a story about a young man who, for no reason other than he saw a need and found a possible solution, raised funds to build a flatbed dryer to service rice farmers in his girlfriend’s hometown of Lopez, Quezon. Jose Diego Roxas, 26, is the spokesperson...
