Yam production, processing, and marketing for the Luzon [Philippines] poverty zones

Purple yam (Dioscorea alata) is commercially grown in the Philippines and is the only supplier in the world market. Thus, the crop is considered one of the important export banner crops. The natural purple anthocyanin pigment makes it excellent as healthful antioxidants. The domestic and export yam products include yam powder, ube-flavored ice cream, dried chips/flakes and peels, puree, yam paste, jam.preserve, candies, breads, cookies, and many other industrial products. Pre-assessments done in the initial stage of the project revealed that the demand for purple yams is great. Its production is very limited due to poor seed system, production, and post-production practices. Farmers grow yams in small patches of land, supply the processors with mixed white and purple rice varieties, of high percentage mechanically damaged tubers, poor storability and inconsistent supply. Interventions to the traditional practices are yam quality awareness, varietal selection for planting and processing, improved packaging and handling, market linkaging and networking. Farmers seminar were co-sponsored and held in the different producing areas in Benguet (CAR), La Union (Region 1), Nueva Vizcaya (Region 2) and Aurora (Region 4) for quality awareness, market linkages and appropriate production technologies. Local varieties selected and recommended to farmers for planting and multiplication per region included ramay-ramay, sampero, kinampay, mindoro, bayolet, and daking. Flour recovery from these variaties range from 25% to 30%; the flour are useful in many bakery products. Crude anthocyanin extraction showed 10% recovery, useful as natural food coloring and dyes. Post harvest loss reduction showed only 10 to 20% from the 50% losses obtained from the traditional practices. These are through proper grading, use of cushion material and bulkhandling. The first Conference on Yam Production, Processing and Marketing in November 2003, co-sponsored DA-BAR and TAEONE Company, the LUZON YAM NETWORK (LUYAN) was established in 2003 to foster closer and long term linkages among farmers, traders, processors and distributors; action agenda per region were prepared and finalized during the LUYAN forum in April 2004. At present, farmers growing yams increased by 10% with financial and technical assistance from the local government units (LGUs), the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), Department of Agriculture and farmer organization group. As a start, two farmers were linked to two processing firms.