It was my first time to go to Sumilao, when the bus dropped me off in Kisolon. When I asked around for directions, I found out that from the juncture between the national road and the road going from the opposite direction from where I was dropped off, is where Sumilao is.

Most Asians are lactose intolerant, and Filipinos are no exception. We put our local dairy industry at a disadvantage since generally, we are not milk drinkers, and the country’s dependence on milk imports even puts the milk industry in a dire situation. I, for one, can only take in limited amount and a lot more can churn disaster on my tummy.

My conversation with Andre Paulo Paraguya revealed a young dairy farmer bent in changing the scenario by providing quality, tasty, and affordable milk and other milk-based products in his neighborhood---one bottle at a time.

Few weeks before the national lockdown, I was elated to have received a message from our e-learning consultant, Sir Rey Alo, informing me to be one of the courseware developers of a new e-learning course.

As much as possible, I hate judging someone else's cooking because I don't want to dampen their joy in the kitchen or drive to create something from scratch. Our Chef Wars this afternoon showed that preparing and sharing food is a unifying act because we ended the activity happy and fulfilled.

The market for processed fruit and vegetables is growing due to covid-19. Aside from planting vegetables and root crops, people at home are stockpiling processed food.

Stockpiling canned and frozen fruits and vegetables is part of the new normal now. It has greatly affected consumer’s buying behavior The fear of scarcity prompted people to start buying processed food. Such new behavior in buying has positively affected the demand for processed goods, canned fruit and vegetables.

In episode 24 of our ‘AgriStoryahay sa ATI’ webinar series, food technologist Phoebe L. Galeon shared and showed us that when a vegetable is in season and in abundance, processing is a logical step to make such farm goods commercially viable.

When vegetables are at farm gate price and readily accessible, they are expected to be affordable. A surplus of it sometimes spells disaster for our farmer friends since some of them cannot keep up marketing and selling which a lot of their goods would end up as waste.