Philippines strives to keep ube throne

• AFP, PADRE GARCIA, Philippines

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The Philippine ube has become a trendsetting sensation from Los Angeles to London to Seoul, with the humble yam’s bright purple hue drawing lines outside coffee shops and bakeries and millions of views on social media.

However, keeping pace with the international boom has proven tricky for the archipelago nation’s overwhelmingly smallholder farmers, with yields declining and some unable to commit to the plant’s nine-month growing time.

Fears that biopiracy might take a chunk out of the blossoming market have prompted the government to announce a ban on the export of the raw form of the yam.

A worker makes purple yam jam at a shop in Manila on Thursday last week.

Photo: AFP

Standing in his ube field south of Manila, farmer-exporter Al Bonifacio said he was in favor of doing whatever it took to protect the crop from any growers overseas trying to cash in on the craze.

“Purple is so royal and is very pleasing to the eye,” the 59-year-old said with a smile during a visit to his one hectare ube farm. “Our greatest fear is if we are not able to supply ube to the world, someone [else] will step in.”

Sold as powder, extract, paste or frozen puree, ube is easily mixed into coffee, pastries, ice cream, spreads and makeup.

An ube topping is spread over sweet ube rice porridge during a purple yam promotional event at a mall in Quezon City, Philippines, on Sept. 23.

Photo: AFP

At a Tokyo gelato shop, ube importer J.P. Mercado said the Japanese market was expanding rapidly after the craze first hit neighboring South Korea.

“It’s really taken off like wildfire,” he said as a batch of powder was slowly stirred into gelato, turning it a bright purple.

“I think social media has been hugely impactful,” he said, adding his client list ranged from small cafes to luxury hotels.

Ube was a staple of Philippine gardens as long as 5,000 years ago, boiled and eaten by families as a substitute to rice when provisions ran out.

Beloved for its mildly sweet, nutty flavor and velvety texture, it later evolved into a party food, consumed as a jam or stewed with sticky rice balls in coconut milk.

Demand exploded locally this decade, most memorably during a purple bread mania that swept the archipelago in the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m super-obsessed with ube,” university student Kym Trivino said as she sipped an ube-matcha concoction at one of Manila’s largest shopping malls.

Baker Diane Bustos said her company sells seven types of ube cookies.

“It took over matcha. That’s really something that we Filipinos should be really proud of,” she said.

However, as ube mania grows globally, clouds loom at home.

Bonifacio said the country’s small farmers widely lacked the facilities for postharvest storage and processing, while access to marketing and financing lagged.

Planting to harvest takes at least nine months, too long for most Filipino farmers who preferred the shorter growing period for beans, squash or bitter melon to feed their families, the farmer added.

Bonifacio said he had been forced to scour the rest of the country for raw ube to meet his growing export commitments, a process that can double his costs.

“We have the land, but quality planting materials are not always available,” local agriculturist Leonilyn Ladao said.

“Last year’s production was just 12,483 tonnes,” Philippine Bureau of Plant Industry official Jose Zalde Samson said of the five-year low.

Industry officials blamed typhoons, which hit key ube farming regions. For the first half of this year, production was up about 17 percent.

“The government has only started promoting ube in the past two to three years as demand spiked,” Samson said.

“Before the ube craze, it was a niche market,” he said, adding it had lagged behind high-value crops such as bananas, mangoes and coffee.

With the pressure on, the government is working on how it can boost supply.

“We are looking at how [the growing season] can be shortened to six months,” Samson said.

With neighbors like Thailand and Vietnam getting into the game, the Philippines is acting to protect its crown.

“We don’t want to export it to countries that could use Philippine ube varieties to compete with us,” Philippine Secretary of Agriculture Francisco Tiu Laurel said last month while revealing the ban on raw ube exports.

“We’ve had data that tubers were being [surreptitiously] exported,” Samson said, declining to provide further details.

Mercado said he backed the Philippine government’s move, which he believed would protect the country’s cultural heritage.

“Ube really is, I would say, very interlocked with the Filipino identity,” he said.

Bonifacio agreed.

We “are stewards of the ube industry,” he said, looking out over his crop. “We have a stake in this. We have to protect it.”