AVANT GARDENER News of farmers dumping tons of unsellable tomatoes by the roadside due to oversupply has been an unfortunate reality for many years. Now, a canning company is doing something about it. Tosen Foods Inc.
(TFI) is a canned goods manufacturer whose products are household names in the Visayas. The company has been in operation for close to 70 years. It ventured into canned goods manufacturing 21 years ago when it began to can sardines under the brands Senorita and Swan, then vegetables like peas, corn, and garbanzos under the brand Mayon three to four years after.
They try to purchase locally when possible, even to this day, when it’s easier to import ingredients. “We source from local farms in Bulacan, Pampanga, and Quezon to produce our sweet whole corn kernel and our cream-style corn,” says company president and third generation agribusiness owner Candice Chung. As folks who need a steady supply of ingredients know, working with local farmers can be challenging.
The country is continually beset by typhoons, which could wipe out a crop, and ever fluctuating farmgate prices means that there’s always a danger of pole vaulting, the industry term for when farmers renege on their previous agreements with buyers so they can sell their produce elsewhere at a higher price. TFI prevents this by canning seasonally, when harvests are bountiful and cultivating good relationships with the coops they work with. “We respect their way of farming.
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