With the opening of the Davao City Food Terminal Complex (DFTC), vegetable producers and traders from remote districts of the city said they no longer worry about middlemen who buy their products and pay them at very unreasonable prices.

In a statement Friday, Joseph Laborte, president of the Highland Vegetable Growers Association (HVGA) from Tugbok district, said the DFTC would help provide small farmers a direct market area to sell their products at competitive prices.

”In our area, our product is only bought for PHP7 to PHP8 but here in DFTC, it can be sold for as much as PHP12,” Laborte said, noting that the absence of middlemen has raised their income considerably.

Agripreneurs here and in the neighboring provinces welcomed the October 18 opening of DFTC, the city’s official wholesale facility for fruits and vegetables in Barangay Daliao, Toril district.

Twenty-seven representatives of vegetable producers, farmers’ associations, and cooperatives from Paquibato, Marilog, Baguio, Toril, and Tugbok districts attended DFTC’s opening.

The City Agriculturist Office has deployed two trucks, with seven tons capacity each, to provide transportation assistance to farmers’ cooperatives that do not have vehicles to deliver their products to DFTC.

Luzminda Eblamo, head of the City Cooperative and Development Office (CCDO), said cooperatives that buy vegetables and fruits are also among the DFTC partners.

“This means that these coops also act as consolidators for their members that will buy the fruit and vegetable products from the DFTC,” she said.

The PHP74.8 million DFTC project, funded by the Department of Agriculture 11 (Davao) in collaboration with the city government, operates round-the-clock for local farmers, producers, traders, and wholesalers.

Fruit and vegetable farm products from across the region are also catered to in the facility on a wholesale basis. (PNA)