Comparative production practices and productivity of organic and conventional vegetable producers in cagayan valley region Northern Philippines

This study aims to document existing practices and productivity of organic vegetables production in Cagayan Valley Region, Northern Philippines. The respondents were 64 organic and 52 conventional vegetable producers. Seven “pinakbet” vegetables were studied, namely, okra, squash, string beans, eggplant, bitter gourd, tomato, and pepper. Descriptive statistics, input-output ratios, and break-even analysis were used to analyze the data. The average area cultivated was 508.55 m² for organic and 2, 972.19 m² for conventional vegetables production. Results show that there was a higher number and longer duration of harvesting of organically grown vegetables than conventionally grown vegetables. Organic vegetable farmer-respondents had higher yield per 1000 m² for okra (748 kg), squash (545 kg), and string beans (437 kg) than the conventional farmers while conventional farmers had higher yield per 1000 m² on eggplant (1, 239 kg), bitter gourd (1, 080 kg), tomato (2, 054 kg), and pepper (330 kg) than their organic farmer counterpart. The organic vegetable farmers had lower capital-output ratio for all the vegetables, lower land-output ratio for eggplant, tomato, okra, squash, and string beans and higher labor intensity for eggplant, bitter gourd, and tomato than the conventional farmers. These indicate that organic vegetable-farmers were more capital-input productive than the conventional farmers.