Benguet town celebrates sweet bounty of strawberries
RIPE FOR THE PICKING In this photo taken in February, the strawberries at a farm in La Trinidad, Benguet, are ready for picking. —NEIL CLARK ONGCHANGCO
BAGUIO CITY—Benguet’s capital town of La Trinidad is basking in the sweet success of this year’s Strawberry Festival, a vibrant celebration of the region’s prized berry, with the festivities reaching their peak with a grand street dancing and float parade this Saturday.
It will be followed by the unveiling of a massive strawberry cake on Sunday to be crafted from 280 kilograms of fresh strawberries and shaped into a “kayabang,” the traditional Ibaloy vegetable basket, organizers said.
The annual festival was first held in 1981 to honor La Trinidad Valley’s 36.4 hectares of strawberry farms, which have been producing 18 to 22 tons of berries per hectare each year, according to Benguet State University (BSU).
BSU rents out the strawberry farms at the center of the valley, which has become a tourism destination for travelers who prefer to pick their own Sweet Charlies—the variety of berries most preferred by the valley’s producers.
READ: In Benguet, strawberry fest makes sweet comeback
Strawberries are farmed in the coolest sections of Benguet, Mountain Province, and, more recently, the town of Kayapa in Nueva Vizcaya, according to the Department of Agriculture (DA). The agency’s production matrix shows a rise in strawberry harvests from 1,188 metric tons in 2023 to 1,449 metric tons last year.
The strawberry trade is still relatively young compared to Benguet’s multimillion-peso vegetable industry, which grew due to high demand from Metro Manila for salad vegetables, said Juliet Ochasan, a farm scientist and researcher at the Bureau of Plant Industry who is studying alternative ways of propagating this popular fruit.
Strawberries are not endemic to the Philippines, and researchers have yet to agree on when they were introduced and cultivated in Benguet, she said.
There are accounts that strawberries became a lucrative crop in the late 1970s, said Aida Pagtan, DA Cordillera information officer, whose 80-year-old mother Eduarda started growing berries in the 1980s and still tends to the family garden.
This was a period when Baguio’s tourism souvenir trade was at its peak. Several case studies list strawberries and jams among the items visitors frequently take home.
“There’s this often-repeated quote that you have not been to Baguio if you don’t bring home strawberries,” Ochasan said.
Benguet’s production is still not sufficient to meet demand. However, today’s strawberry farmers have been content with supplying tourists and residents who shop at the Baguio market, as revenues remain substantial, Ochasan said. I
