Mission World

Organic foods help provide livelihood and nurture Christian living

Philippines (UCAN) - Organic vinegar from tropical fruits in Palawan province has provided stay-at-home mothers a livelihood and an activity that promotes Christian living, according to the local priest.

Sylvia Pendon, 83, offered visitors a taste of vinegar made with banana seeds, honey and alkaline water in her home-office in Bancao-Bancao village, Puerto Princesa City, 570kms southwest of Manila.

Some patrons take Banagar Mix as a cleansing tea and a dietary supplement. She said people should care for their body, which she called "a temple of God."
She credits her feeling energetic and strong despite her age to God's grace and the organic foods she eats.

In 2003, she and other members of Palawan Women's Foundation Inc. established RS Bio-Foods, an organic-food-processing venture that uses the province's tropical fruits.
The group started to produce organic vinegar and other food products from 20 fruits. Other products include sauces, condiments, spices and salad dressings.

The women sell their vinegar at 20 pesos (US$0.48) for a 350-milliliter bottle in their houses to patrons for personal use, or for resale in stores. The women told UCA News they sell at least 10 bottles a day.

Pendon recalled how she wanted to help needy women in the province, including those from indigenous communities in the southern part of Palawan. She trained them in groups to make vinegar and today about 20 mothers earn a "substantial" income from selling it. Southern towns of Palawan and Puerto Princesa City form the territory of Puerto Princesa vicariate, where 70% of 596,018 people are Catholics.

The rest are mostly other Christians, Muslims and indigenous people with their native beliefs. The area belongs to the country's Region IV, which reported the largest increase in poverty incidence from 2000 to 2003, from 35,749 families to 73,049.

Fr Jose Felipe Torrecampo, head of the Vicariate's Commission on Social and Special Concerns (CSSC), spoke with UCA News about the organic food initiative. He said the project helps "realise God's purpose in the lives of people."

The home industry helped Condrada Pascual, 45, provide her three children with food money when they go to school. Before making vinegar, they depended solely on the income of her fisherman husband.

Parish-based stores plan to sell government-subsidized rice as supply dwindles
Manila (UCAN) - Parish-based stores have been asked to help sell rice at government-subsidised prices so poor people can buy their staple food as stocks dwindle and prices rise, a Church official announced.

Fr Mario Castillo said over Church-run Radio Veritas that the Department of Agriculture (DA) had offered to supply parish-based stores in Manila archdiocese an additional 50,000-60,000 sacks of National Food Authority (NFA) rice.

These Church-based stores could help bring affordable rice to the poor today, when traders are accused of hoarding the grain, further reducing supplies and inflating prices, he said.
NFA is the government agency, under the DA, responsible for ensuring food security including stability in the supply and price of rice, the country's staple grain. When it set the retail price of NFA rice at 18.25 pesos (US$0.44) a kilogram, other commercial grains were selling for 20-25 pesos.

In early April, people around Manila were seen queuing to buy cheap rice from trucks dispatched by NFA. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, at an April 4 National Food Summit in Pampanga province, northwest of Manila, said increased prices in the country resulted from a worldwide "deficiency" in rice supply caused by high feed and wheat prices and low harvest.

The Philippines will reportedly import 2.2 million metric tonnes of rice from Vietnam, Thailand, the U.S. and other countries to meet this year's demand.