MANILA, 7 June 2007 — Production and export of plant-based produce is expected to increase starting this year as the Philippines has finally clinched a deal with a church-based company in New Zealand last week.
Returning from a two-day state visit to New Zealand and Australia, Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap told reporters in a press briefing that Sanitarium, the sole company that makes and distributes cereals all over the world, has inked a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Agriculture to supply the company with tropical fruits such as bananas, pineapple and mangoes and other food products.
Yap said the deal provides opportunities for Overseas Filipino Workers looking for the right field to invest their earnings.
He said the government is willing to help future OFW investors and businessmen who are willing to take the risk.
He cited in particular Ben Molina, who was once a “milking cow,” as OFWs are called, but is now the one milking cows.
Molina started raising two cows for dairy milk and now has increased the number to 120 milking cows.
Visibly happy from outcome of the state visit, Yap said the efforts of the Philippine government to tap New Zealand’s vast cereal company has finally yielded fruit. Sanitarium distributes cereals, spreads, prepared dips and vegetable meat alternatives to 50 countries around the world.
The clinching of the agreement makes the Philippines the base of Sanitarium in the Asian region.
Yap said this ensures further increase if the country’s gross domestic product, recorded at 6.9 percent this year, the highest in 17 years so far.
Agriculture contributed a remarkable 4.2 percent to the total GDP, he emphasized.
Calling itself a health food company, Sanitarium advocates the use and consumption of health-based and plant-based products. As company outlet of the Seventh Day Adventist, it espouses healthy lifestyle and eating of fruits and vegetables.
Its history takes pride in pioneering the manufacture of cereal in the 1880s in Battle Creek, USA. It was Seventh Day Adventist Dr. John Harvey, together with his brother William, who founded the popular Kellogg’s. Sanitarium in Australia and New Zealand was an offshoot of Harvey’s disagreement with the United States church’s philosophy of commercialism over nutrition.
