Guimaras camote chips to be available world-wide soon

By Elsa S. Subong

Friday 20th of July 2012

ILOILO CITY, July 20 (PIA) -- The sweet potatoes or camote will make it to the world market soon, as the province of Guimaras is set to have its processing plant through public-private partnership.

Guimaras Governor Felipe Hilan Nava, said in a press statement that the plant is funded by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Science and Technology with counterpart from the province.

Nava said the plant will be put up at the Nueva Valencia Multi-Purpose Cooperative which shall also manage it with the identified farmer-producers.

The mechanized processing plant requires less labor, as when the camote comes out, it is already processed.

“We will start exporting next year because we will still put the facilities in place and do trial run,” Nava said in the local dialect.

He added that they target to begin with about 40 tons of camote chips export by next year, assuring they will be ready when there are more market demands.

He said he was hopeful the product will be in demand in the US and other target markets citing the global trend of shifting lifestyles to healthy foods.

The farmers and the stakeholders should take advantage of the opportunity as there are several species of sweet potatoes all over the world, but it was the camote produced in Guimaras that met the standard set by the Los Angeles-based exporter, he added.

The governor said the endeavor will more likely benefit the more than 500 sweet potato farmers in the province, who earn as low as P5 per kilo or P50 per 20-liter can during peak season.

A hectare of properly-managed sweet potato plantation will produce about four to six tons but not all will pass the standards.

Nava said they tried to bring up the price by P10-12 per kilo.

He added an agreement will be made with the farmers that they should not keep on increasing the price so as not to discourage the investors. (JCM/ESS-PIA6, Iloilo)