Yes, we can grow wheat in the Philippines

Dedicated to the late Reynaldo A Tabbada PhD, professor and dissertation adviser of the author, UST Graduate School 

Yes, we can grow wheat in the Philippines

Wheat is the third most important staple food of Filipinos after rice and corn.  Ironically we import it to the last grain to make the popular pandesal and pasta, and a wide variety of bakery products.  Its milling byproducts constitute an important feed ingredient for livestock, piggery and poultry. 

 

Dr. Abe V. Rotor  

Yes, the Filipino can. We love to eat pandesal, a unique and distinctly Filipino kind of bun. Pandesal comes from wheat flour. We import the mother material, the wheat grain, mainly from the United States. Eight (or more) companies which grouped themselves into the Philippine Flour Millers Association or PAFMI import the grain, mill it into flour, and sell it to the baker. The bran called pollard, by-product of milling is formulated into feeds, together with feed wheat which they also import directly. Virtually the same members formed another group, Philippine Association of Feed Millers or PAFMIL. They sell feeds to the livestock and poultry raisers. They also sell meat and related products which they directly import.  These are made into hot dog, hamburger, et al.

 Author with baked products from local wheat harvest

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Here is a scenario for the pandesal eater. The wheat comes from the prairies of North American covering the Dakotas, Kansas, Minnesota’s, Missouri and a dozen more States. A state may be bigger than the Philippines in land area. The American farmer who cultivates hundreds, if not thousands, of acres using airplane and railway systems, plants his wheat either before winter (the germinated seed remains dormant or overwinters), or in the spring. Thus, when we import, we specify winter or spring wheat.

Generally the spring hard wheat is preferred for making pandesal, although it is more costly. We import the premium wheat, one of the best in the world. Just to make pandesal! Sixty percent of total volume is made into pandesal. The soft type of wheat (varieties with less of the leavening substance called gluten), is made into cakes, pastries and crackers. There is also the durum wheat or pasta, which are made into macaroni or spaghetti, mainly by the PAFMI members, too. They make those ready-in-two minutes and instant noodles, pancit canton, mami, soups, etc.

 
Standing crop of wheat on a typical ricefield in the Philippines; newly threshed wheat grain. 

Now, where is my pandesal? Either it is shrinking or taking new shapes, or both. Go to the popular bakeshops, they have various versions of pandesal. Of course with different product presentation - and prices. That is why pandesal is difficult to standardize, and more difficult to socialize. Not even during the martial law days. How could it be a poor man’s breakfast? Where is the control button? Well at least, during  Arturo Tanco’s time as DA secretary, wheat importation was in the hands of the National Grains Authority, under PD 4. and the members of the PAFMI and PAFMIL got their allocations of grain to mill and sell. From the revenues of NGA, warehouses and other post harvest facilities for rice and corn farmers were put up. In short, NGA without national budget, depended on corporate source, mainly from wheat importation, subsidized the small rice and corn farmer. Thus was the golden era of the grain industry in the country.

So the wheat grain arrives here. After importation tax, the grain goes to the giant bins and mill complexes of the PAFMIL members concentrated in Metro Manila, others in Cebu and Mindanao. Total value has greatly increased to some 5 billion pesos yearly (low estimate). One can imagine the staggering figure if we include feed wheat and pollard which the PAFMIL also imports. Plus, of course, the imported corn, fish meal and soyabean meal which are important feed ingredients. Next time you eat hamburger, fried chicken or pork chop, think of food on a pie chart. What part is Filipino?

Threshing wheat by hand is similar to rice. Threshing is much easier, and wheat stalk is kinder to the hand. The hay has higher nutrient value than rice, and is easier for animals to digest. Author's son Marlo, then 5 years old, takes pride in displaying a freshly harvested wheat from a farmer's field.

Well, at least the pork in a can of pork and beans is ours. But it is not entirely. The corn comes from Thailand. It is cheaper to import corn than to cultivate it here.  Analogously, it is cheaper to import rice than grow it here. No wonder we (the government) import more than one million metric tons of rice every year – from Thailand, Vietnam, China, Pakistan and India! Why should we not grow enough rice and plant wheat, too, and have pandesal?

Pandesal is shrinking, it is getting more expensive. And this is the reason we should plant our own wheat.  As shown in earlier figures from our local wheat varieties which we planted on rice paddies before the EDSA revolution, local wheat can reduce our dependence on imported wheat. We planted Trigo 2 (for cakes and pastries) varieties which were developed by the Institute of Plant Breeding and UPLB. Farmer cooperators in the Ilocos region, Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog, and also in the Visayas and Mindanao planted for straight five years wheat on their ricefield as second crop under a packaged program initiated by DA, NFA, PCARRD and UPLB and other state universities.

Yes, we can grow wheat successfully in the Philippines. A proof other than the recent success is that during the Spanish period, farmers in Cagayan down to Batangas were growing a variety known as a Cagayan wheat. Wheat is very important to the church. We were then self-sufficient and even shipped part of our produce through the galleon. Read Frenchmen, de Gironierre’s autobiography, Half a Century in the Philippines.  

 Interviews on Wheat 

 As a farmer, I get good average yield, as high as 3.1 MT per hectare, higher than world’s average, comparatively profitable with other cash crops after rice. I use the same tools and equipment as with irrigation, fertilization, and post harvest processes. With the government support I am assured of both market and price of my produce. I also have wheat bran and hay for my livestock, better than those of rice. And I can raise poultry and livestock.

As a consumer, locally grown wheat can be made into arroz caldo, ridgepole, wheat cakes - other than the conventional pandesal, pan de bara, pan de lemon pan de coco, cakes and pastries. Now I can eat more than the average per capita level which is 10.3 to 12 kg, because it becomes more affordable, especially so that wheat comes in various preparations, including rice-wheat mix. In this case I will have higher protein intake as high as 12 percent for whole wheat, 8 to 9 percent for regular flour. Rice has barely half protein level. I get 75 percent starch, so with rice. But I get gluten, the substance that makes wheat, and only wheat, naturally leavening. I get also high crude fiber, oil, minerals and vitamins. Now you see why a big American individual has but sandwich for lunch. Of course, what is in between the bread equally counts.

Wheat, yes, we can adopt you again on our fertile soil and under our beautiful sky and in the loving, faithful toiling hands of our farmers. Wheat, you can be part of our dining table, of our children’s baon, of our farm animals' feed, of our fiesta’s merriment, and not only in hamburger and pandesal. We love you better under a Pilipino name.~

Triticale - a cross between wheat (Triticum) and rye (Secale). Triticale was successfully grown on the Benguet in the seventies.

As a rule, triticale combines the high yield potential and good grain quality of wheat with the disease and environmental tolerance (including soil conditions) of rye. It is grown mostly for forage or fodder although some triticale-based foods can be purchased at health food stores or are to be found in some breakfast cereals, bread and other food products such as cookies, pasta, and pizza dough. The protein content is higher than that of wheat although the gluten in fraction is less. The grain has also been stated to have higher levels of lysine than wheat. As a feed grain, triticale is already well established and of high economic importance.

NOTE: Author served as national coordinator in wheat production in the Philippines, a joint program of NFA (NGA then), DA, and PCARRD under President Ferdinand Marcos' administration. He represented the Philippines in a conference, presented a paper on growing wheat in the Philippines, at the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento del Mais y Trigo (CIMMYT), Mexico.

Dr Reynaldo A Tabbada was the youngest head of the Department of Biology, University of the Philippines, Diliman, which earned a distinct reputation of Par Excellence during his term. He was also professorial lecturer of the University of Santo Tomas Graduate School.