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Arroyo strawberry farm visit boosts growers’ morale


LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's annual pilgrimage of picking strawberries with her grandchildren may just be a photo opportunity but to growers here, it is the boost they need. "When the President started coming here to the plot six years ago, more tourists are also coming over," said Evelyn Salvador, a grower in Betag village. President Arroyo harvested strawberries with granddaughters, Mikaela and Monique. Benguet officials were also present during the strawberry picking. Salvador is one of 600 families in Trinidad growing strawberries, which have their peaks already this summer month as well as in December. The Benguet State University, which helps strawberry farmers, said that the good harvest brought by cooperative weather in the past two years had other towns wanting to go into strawberry-farming. Dr. Silvestre Kudan of BSU College of Agriculture said that farmers of Tuba, Atok, Tublay, Kibungan and Bakun are now going into strawberry. Kudan said that the introduction of hardier strawberry varieties enabled these towns to go into cultivation. He named these varieties as Sweet Charlie from Argentina, the current market bestseller, and Festival and Camarosa, new varieties from California. La Trinidad agriculturist Felicitas Ticbaen said that the Arroyo administration promised a P12-million strawberry processing center to help farmers package and process their produce. The center, to be built here, would be having a packaging and processing components within rigid standards imposed by the Bureau of Food and Drugs. If these products were duly accredited by BFAD, then strawberry products would have a bigger market not only here but internationally, Ticbaen said. - GMANews.TV
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