Native garlic to raise local sufficiency to 20 percentAgriculture Undersecretary Cheryl Marie Natividad-Caballero said the DA is aggressively pushing garlic as one of the banner high value crops programs given its growing demand, both for household and processing use. “We want to bring back garlic as the ‘white gold’ of Ilocos region,” Caballero, who oversees the DA’s high value crops program, told reporters. The agriculture department is currently working out on its financial plan to determine the budgetary support requirement for the local garlic industry, Caballero said. The country’s garlic output last year declined by two percent to 5,765 MT from 5,884 MT in 2022, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. About two-thirds of the annual garlic production in the Philippines comes from the Ilocos region, making it the country’s top producer of garlic.

Source: Philippine Star June 05, 2024 03:53 UTC