Rotting Abundance: What Coconuts, Onions, and Durian Teach Us—and What ASEAN Got Right (and Wrong)
By Karl Garcia
Fruits and vegetables once built civilizations. In the Philippines, they built export booms, funded regimes, and shaped rural life—only to expose, again and again, a familiar failure: abundance without governance eventually rots.
From coconuts before Marcos, to bananas and pineapples under Dole and Del Monte, to mangoes, onions, and now durian, the country keeps repeating the same cycle. What makes this moment different is that ASEAN neighbors have already run ahead—and left us a playbook of what to do and what never to repeat, especially as China becomes the dominant buyer shaping regional supply chains.
Coconut Was the First Warning
Before bananas and durian, coconut was king. By the 1950s and 1960s, it anchored Philippine exports and rural livelihoods. Then came the Marcos-era coconut levy—centralizing wealth, extracting from farmers, and starving the sector of reinvestment. By the time reform arrived decades later, trees were old, productivity low, and farmers poor.
Coconut taught a lesson ASEAN neighbors absorbed better than we did: who controls value chains matters more than export volume.
ASEAN’s Palm Oil Lesson: Do the Industry, Don’t Just Export the Crop
Malaysia and Indonesia turned palm oil into one of the most powerful agro-industrial complexes in the world. But their experience offers both do’s and don’ts.
What they did right:
- Built downstream industries (oleochemicals, food processing, biofuels)
- Invested in R&D, replanting, and yield improvement
- Treated palm oil as national industrial strategy, not just a commodity
- Maintained state capacity to shape markets, not just react to them
What they got wrong—and paid for:
- Allowed environmental destruction to outrun governance
- Let smallholders lag behind large estates
- Faced global backlash over sustainability, forcing costly course corrections
- Became exposed to single-commodity dependence
The key lesson for the Philippines is not to copy palm oil—but to understand this: export crops must evolve into diversified value chains, or they collapse under scrutiny, disease, or politics.
Coconut never made that transition. Bananas partially did. Onions never stood a chance.
Durian and China: The New Gold Rush
Durian is today what coconut was in the 1960s and bananas in the 1990s—a boom fueled by external demand, especially from China, which now dominates ASEAN fruit supply chains.
Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia show us the do’s and don’ts in real time.
What successful exporters did:
- Imposed strict phytosanitary standards
- Built traceability and farm registration systems
- Controlled export timing and volumes
- Invested in cold chains and logistics
- Treated China not as a spot market, but as a regulated, strategic buyer
Thailand dominates not because it grows more durian—but because it governs the supply chain.
What weaker players risk:
- Overexpansion without quality control
- Farmer exposure to sudden price crashes
- Rejection of shipments over traceability failures
- Dependency on a single market with asymmetric power
China does not just buy fruit. It reshapes production decisions, land use, labor patterns, and pricing structures across ASEAN.
China Is Not the Problem—Dependence Is
China’s scale creates opportunity. But ASEAN history shows the danger of single-market dependence.
Palm oil producers learned this when policy shifts and sustainability pressure squeezed margins. Durian exporters will learn it when China tightens standards or shifts sourcing. The Philippines already learned it painfully with coconuts and bananas—only we learned too late.
The question is not whether to sell to China.
The question is whether the Philippines will govern the relationship—or be governed by it.
Where the Philippines Keeps Failing
Unlike its neighbors, the Philippines repeatedly:
- Treats export booms as temporary windfalls
- Fails to reinvest early in R&D and replanting
- Neglects smallholders while favoring enclaves
- Allows imports and smuggling to undercut domestic producers
- Treats waste as an afterthought instead of a signal
That is why:
- Coconut stagnated for decades
- Mango exports faded
- Banana plantations became disease-vulnerable
- Onions were dumped while imports arrived
- Durian now risks repeating the same arc
Food Waste Is the Final Accounting
More than 80% of biodegradable municipal waste in the Philippines is food. What remains invisible is farm-level waste—harvests abandoned when markets collapse or imports arrive at the wrong time.
Waste is not an accident.
It is the balance sheet of failed coordination.
ASEAN exporters learned—sometimes painfully—that waste, environmental damage, and labor precarity eventually trigger market punishment. The Philippines keeps treating these as externalities.
The ASEAN Do’s and Don’ts—Applied to the Philippines
DO:
- Treat export crops as national systems, not isolated successes
- Build downstream industries and processing capacity
- Invest early in R&D, disease control, and replanting
- Enforce traceability and quality standards before markets demand them
- Diversify export markets before dependence sets in
DON’T:
- Rely on a single crop, single buyer, or single corporate model
- Sacrifice farmers and labor for short-term export gains
- Allow imports and smuggling to undermine domestic production
- Ignore food waste as “inefficiency” instead of policy failure
- Confuse export volume with development
Coconut, Onions, Durian—One Lesson
Coconut showed how political capture destroys farmers.
Palm oil shows how industrial strategy can succeed—and overreach.
Durian shows how China reshapes agriculture overnight.
Onions show what happens when governance collapses entirely.
Different crops. Same test.
A country that lets onions rot while importing substitutes, that lets coconut farmers age into poverty, that risks burning through durian’s boom without safeguards, is not lacking demand or land.
It is lacking strategic discipline.
Fruits and vegetables once built civilizations. In today’s ASEAN, they separate countries that govern abundance from those that merely extract it.
The Philippines still has time to choose which side it belongs to—but the window is closing, and China’s supply chains will not wait.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
Durian is one of my favorite fruits. I’ve sampled many durians from Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. While durian from the Philippines (Mindanao) is quite good, I’m sad to inform that Thai and Vietnamese durian varietals taste much better. Same goes for jackfruit. I find Philippine young coconut to be excellent though, whether regular young coconut or makapuno.
I would note that as the dollars sent by OFWs (and now sent internally by BPO workers) increased as a percentage of GDP, there was probably less incentive to innovate the market.
In a model world the free market would constantly innovate new markets for locally produced goods. Free trade with neighboring countries would further create incentives to innovate. The government, in seeking to gain more tax revenue would build appropriate infrastructure to increase trade activity. But with such a large amount of money injected by remittances to drive consumption, the only area of innovation is find new ways to import goods. The import market isn’t even controlled by Filipinos, which is the sad thing; it is controlled by China-based exporters who have set up online marketplaces. Sovereign debt to cover shortfalls probably makes things worse.
Two years ago I felt pity upon a friend’s hapless parents and decided to give a one-time gift (5k) to pay of the debt they took on to buy calamansi marcots. I visited a few weeks ago to see how their calamansi plantation was doing, as we had listed their farm to receive the irrigation equipment as well.
To my non-shock, the calamansi marcot still has not turned a profit, even though marcot trees bear marketable fruit within a year to year-and-a-half. The father had gone back to rubber tapping for the family income, which is insufficient of course. The friend’s younger siblings had become even more thin, as did the father, but somehow the mother got fatter (lol).
Anyway at the turn of the 20th century there was a fungal disease called South American Leaf Blight (SALB) that devastated the then-dominant rubber plantations of the Amazon. It was at this point that the French started huge rubber plantations in Indochina to replace Amazonian rubber needed for industry. The Dutch followed suit in Indonesia and the British also in Malaya. Increased industrial need during WWII led to American companies developing new rubber strains more resistant to SALB and Amazon rubber plantations were replanted. Brazil had a massive government program to replant her rubber plantations in the 1970s until 1980s. The Amazon became dominant in rubber once again. A major SALB epidemic caused collapse of replanted Central and South American rubber plantations almost totally by the 1990s.
Cue in Philippines. In the late 1990s word of the rubber opportunity reached provincial Filipinos. In the 2000s many provinces in Mindanao had rubber trees sprout up everywhere, with many families investing money into rubber seedlings. The global commodity price for rubber rose steadily throughout the 2000s, spiking in the early 2010s before collapsing due to oversupply. Most families “got on the train” too late, were saddled with excessive debt from buying rubber seedling and buying Government-owned Lands (GOLs) to start rubber farms from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) or re-buying land from someone who previously bought GOLs. This particular family had taken out loans for the DAR land in 2010, right before the market crash of rubber commodities.
After a decade of barely surviving off of rubber tapping for the now market bottom price of rubber, the father decided to go into calamansi farming in the early 2020s. As some might know, that’s how Zamboanga Sibugay got the nickname “Calamansi capital of the world” due to the 2010s boom of export-oriented calamansi products/drinks. Well by 2020 the market price for export calamansi was about to collapse as well due to oversupply. It has now collapsed. So the family with two parents, a lola, and 5 kids went back to subsistence rubber tapping which is worth even less (but the latex of does not spoil like calamansi does).
Just a small story that I personally know that illustrates a microcosm of the Philippines getting on the train way too late because of excitement over trends, going in with too much enthusiasm and too little planning, then getting blown out in the end.
P.S. I had to Google the specific DAR program as I forgot the exact name, and apparently Vietnam is about the corner the market for high-quality calamansi concentrate, calamansi derived products, and calamansi drinks. In Vietnam calamansi is called “Philippine lime” as it isn’t even from Vietnam. The native citrus in Vietnam are either the key lime or makrut (kaffir/Thai) lime. Calamansi is a cross between kumquat (also native in Vietnam) and mandarin orange (also native in Vietnam/Southern China).
P.P.S. Rubber trees produce useful amounts of latex for about 30 years. So for the rubber trees of my friend’s father and his neighbors that were planted in the 2000s, the trees only have about 10-15 more years of useful latex production left. Maybe less. Nearly every single older person out in these provinces become indigent seniors by the time they reach their 60th birthday.
“To my non-shock, the calamansi marcot still has not turned a profit, even though marcot trees bear marketable fruit within a year to year-and-a-half.” – Joey
That is tough. But you can see how off the fellow’s projections were if even w/o any debt for the in the calamansi marcot, he still could not turn a profit. There are people like that, not just in the Philippines, who have a skill but poor business acumen. My brother was that way. He loved fixing vehicles but could never own his own shop because his business acumen is poor. I had a brother-in-law here in the US who was an engineer. When he set up his own business, he would bid below his cost just to get a job. Needless to say, that formula didn’t last.
Without basic knowledge that goes beyond one’s immediate existence and needs, it is hard to operate in a larger world. These rubber and calamansi farmers were trying to get in on a world market mostly out of desperation to increase their economic position. While they made bad business decisions, they were not equipped with the requisite skills in the first place through little fault of their own. Unfortunately the only ones who ended up “winning” are the sellers of seedlings and marcots, who are mostly Chinoys.
“Unfortunately the only ones who ended up “winning” are the sellers of seedlings and marcots, who are mostly Chinoys.” – Joey N.
I’ve heard that story way too often, and going back to the 1980s when I was still a young man here in the US.
That is why I encourage folk like you and others to tell success stories wherever you can. If one considers Chinoys as Filipinos, maybe we can tell their success stories too.
if the family had made profits, they would not tell joey, would they! in case joey asked them to pay him back, haha.
anyhow, farmers these days diversify their crops and plant other crops. aside from calamansi they have sibuyas, kamote, kamoteng kahoy, bananas, corn, etc. and they also have kalabaw, and make kaseyo, puting keso, (cottage cheese) from kalabaw’s milk that they sell in the market.
influencers today blog about the successes (and pseudo successes!) of fellow pinoys in the internet, and even endorsed them too. and sometimes, influencers got into trouble for inadvertently endorsing scams in their blogs like what happened to influencer neri naig, a relative of senator kiko pangilianan.
“influencers today blog about the successes ” – Kasambahay
Yeah, I’m afraid I got left behind by that trend. I think after my teen-age years I stopped paying attention to influencers….unless maybe it was something I considered important.
Unfortunately for them, I know where they live lol. The money was a gift though, so no repayment was expected. They have “repaid” through hospitality with what little they have, which is enough.
I’ve found most farmers in the Philippines to… just not be really that good at farming. If they had followed even half of the logic of your diversification, the Philippines would not lack enough domestically produced food.
I’ve also found Filipino farmers often are more hardheaded than the average Filipino. Educating them would be a tall order as it isn’t uncommon for them to stop their studies in elementary school because they didn’t have supplies, were forced to help out at home, or they just didn’t see a point in continuing. The best way to teach these people is to demonstrate to them in practical hands-on terms on how something might be beneficial, as they are very practical people with what they do know. Hands-on teaching requires a lot of effort though. It is not a short-term fix.
“The best way to teach these people is to demonstrate to them in practical hands-on terms on how something might be beneficial, as they are very practical people with what they do know. Hands-on teaching requires a lot of effort though. It is not a short-term fix.” – Joey
I discussed this with ChatGPT in light of the existence of the agricultural college at University of the Philippines Los Baños and the International Rice Research Institute. I got very interesting information on the apparently tremendous successes of both institutions AND the failures of the country as a whole to take advantage of the theoretical AND hands-on teaching they have provided.
I won’t bother posting most of what Chat had to say since you are not a believer of that tool, but here are some excerpts:
>>The Philippines did not fail because Filipinos cannot learn.
It failed because the political system punishes long-term competence and rewards short-term loyalty.
UPLB and IRRI showed what is possible.
The nation showed what it chooses.
Hands-on teaching is the antidote — but only if embedded in:
That is precisely what the Philippines has chronically avoided.<<
Being the tool that it is, ChatGPT doesn’t just make brief statements. It substantiates its conclusions. And if anything looks vague, unclear, or even non-sensical, the user can always prompt the chatbot to elaborate and clarify.
Then it is up to the user to draw his own conclusions.
Of course Chinoys are Filipinos. I have met far more dirt poor Chinoys than rich ones.
Much has also been written here on this blog, in Philippine media and academia about how the business habits of Chinoys may be emulated. Mostly Chinoy success has to do with far more simpler reasons: judicious restraint in spending, a penchant for saving money, being able to be a friend to many but only trusting the truly trustworthy when it comes to business partners.
“Of course Chinoys are Filipinos. I have met far more dirt poor Chinoys than rich ones.” – Joey
Yes, I suppose it depends on where you hang out. Let me share this experience of mine from the 70’s:
The Osmond Brothers came to town and were performing at the Araneta Coliseum. My barkada and I decided to go since the “bleacher” tickets were very affordable, to our surprise.
When we got to the parking lot on the evening of their performance, we were floored by the number of luxury cars and young “beautiful” people coming out of them, all well dressed and many with their dates, etc. etc. Cubao was our “teritoryo” but we had never seen so many luxury cars at the Araneta parking lot.
And they all looked & spoke Chinese!
So if you want to meet the rich Chinoys, you have to go to these expensive functions!
“Mostly Chinoy success has to do with far more simpler reasons: judicious restraint in spending, a penchant for saving money, being able to be a friend to many but only trusting the truly trustworthy when it comes to business partners.” – Joey
Yes, a Chinoy kabarkada of mine for four years while in college explained some of their thinking to me. You did forget, I believe “hard work.” Even with the heat, Chinoys on the whole are not afraid of hard work.
He also told me about the value of trust in their business community.
there is a big story of which our folks in Bikol were also part of called “Prosperity without Progress”, a book my brother has but I have only browsed in it so far. Though I have a book which tells another part of the story called “Story of Abaca”. Basically, Philippines especially Albay once had a biological monopoly on abaca, the material prized in the 19th century as the best material for marine rope until synthetics replaced it from the 1920s onwards. “The Story of Abaca” has indications (I am retraining myself to read again like before, something that being online too much has somewhat diminished, so I will get to read that book completely) that due to the monopoly, Bikolano planters did not pay enough attention to even delivering a well-processed harvest product to exporters. “Prosperity without Progress” is more about the YOLO attitude of the planters, not surprising considering how my folks can often be.
If my grandfather hadn’t utilized his being the son of moderately successful mid-sized abaca planters (the big ones were often Majorcans married to mestizas) to be the first to study (to become a lawyer) in the family, he might have gone back to what many of his relatives from what I heard went back to, the standard of living before abaca. But then again he decided to leave Tiwi and raise his family in Daraga where he at some point became a judge. Judge Irineo Salazar.
My father BTW was always cagey about any plans I had for any form of business because he had seen so many harebrained business schemes among his own relatives. What heard of is how my grandfather bought his own tricycle fleet and had it run with barely any maintenance so at some point it fell apart. Allegedly!
Abaca production moved to Davao at some point because IIRC Japanese businessmen there figured out how to mass process the harvest, something that did not work too well in the rough hilly terrain of Albay with its mostly smallholders or even the hacienda-dominated areas of Camarines Sur. Somehow Costa Rica and Ecuador now also plant abaca, which is still in demand for specific purposes on the world market, but not as much as in the days of yore.
Not just a YOLO attitude but also there is a certain mass effect of bandwagoning; both combined to predictably negative effects most times.
The other part of these stories is how the Filipinos who make these mistakes just shrug it off and go back to trying to survive. I have a lot of sympathy for that, as they made mistakes to begin with partly due to lack of education and opportunity.
I guess a neoliberal technocratic tendency is to overcomplicate the proposed fixes, as even the most well-meaning among this political and bureaucratic class often prefer the concerns of the monied rather than that of a majority population. It may be a simplification to condense the issues, but wrapping fairly straightforward fixes in layers of laws, executive policies and IRRs is too often due to that tilted preference.
I’ve found in life that for most problems the solutions are not as complicated than the problem appears to be. If a problem is too large, as many problems are in the Philippines, large problems may be separated into more manageable goals that when finished fit into the overall solution. Finally industrializing is the most direct fix to what ails the Philippines, and unless early industrializing countries that had to go about it alone, the Philippines would probably have foreign investors lining up if the business climate was not so protectionist of local rent seekers.
Actually I am often perplexed by the extreme allergy of Filipino movers and shakers with the notion of bringing manufacturing to the Philippines. I’ve heard variations of what amounts to be “It’s beneath the Filipino.” Well maybe working on a factory assembly line may seem beneath those in the elite class, but I’ve met workers in the handful of factories the Philippines has and nearly every worker was quite happy for such an opportunity to dignified employment and a stable salary.
Instead there are policies and programs to increase the number of college-educated Filipinos, to bypass industrialization and go immediately to a post-industrial society that provides high-value services. Having more college-educated Filipinos is a good thing to be clear, but without a base below amounts of building a second story of a building before building the ground floor, to predictable results. It’s really sad out there in the provinces.
there are self made and very rich entrepreneurs in our country that lack formal education like the founder of mang inasal, edgar sia II who now owns hotels. lack of education has never stand on the way of filipinos keen to progress in life. like mark zukerberg of meta, our ex finance sec now executive sec ralph recto is also a school dropout, but goes with the right crowd and succeeded.
education is helpful but does not always guarantee success.
I was also a dropout, not to go into business but due to financial pressure, though I went back a few years later to complete my education.
I would not look primarily in education to make a young person rich one day, but rather to teach critical life skills that may be used for vertical advancement within their area of study or to be used for horizontal advancement by applying what they learned to adjacent fields. Most college-educated people end up in important roles within an organization, which is what I call honorable and dignified work.
There are a number of consultants I have met over the years on various projects who greatly impressed me. One of the best project managers I ever met (and who I learned from earlier in my career) had his formal education in classical dance.
in our country, govt sponsored free k-12 public education is compulsory (since 2012) and parents are mandated to send their children to school. most parents want their children to be better than them and made personal sacrifices just so their children can successfully complete k -12.
parents had better very good reason to keep their children out of school, or social workers will pay them a not so friendly visit. for the financially hard up parents, help is available like the program 4Ps, on the condition that children be sent to school. these days, being dirt poor is no longer a reason for kids to stay out of school.
Me too I was kicked out due to pambubulakbol resulting to failure in many subjects. But I rebounded in another school.
I think Recto only faked his resume in his web site and he faked his educational attainment which said he had an MBA or economics masteral.
Anyways he is good unless he is just fooling us again.8
in our country we have GABAY INC. (guide) run mostly by govt agencies to help would be entrepreneurs in mentoring and research, etc. it tells them what they are up against, what they must do and how to make their business sustainable. it also tells about budgeting, the operating cost is taken from the income, and from not the capital. but most importantly, they must have business plan that includes the ground work, licenses and so on. already the amount eats into the capital. so for 20K outlay, the capital is probly at 10K, the rest is for buying much needed equipment, and overheads like rent, licenses, maintenance of premises, etc.
relatives often approached me to lend them capital but when I asked to see their business plan, they have none to show! all they have is big dreams. once I humored a dear relative who wanted to go into business and been badgering me for capital, and when I lend him the capital, he turned around and asked me what he should do with the money. well, if he does not know what to do, he can always return the money to me! and then he was gone. never heard from him again. I have a good laugh. silly boy, it is only money.
Oh boy.
I am like that boy in the movie home alone, I have made my relatives disappear!
Just watchout for non relartive akyat bahays.
if there’s a will there are relatives.
thanks for the tip.
that GABAY stuff sounds good.. what also exists though is something I found out about by chance, there is now a “lending app” for Filipinos called JuanHand that allegedly even uses AI to check whether to give people a loan or not.
Now are we teachable? because even the learned is even more difficult to teach unless they really want to learn.
of course, but it isn’t something that can be done in one quick step. As a trainer/coach once told us, there is a difference between knowing what to do, knowing HOW to do it, actually being ABLE to do it, and actually doing it.
Joey’s idea of giving the poor factory jobs makes sense as jobs help give structure to people’s lives which can be a good starting point.
Yes a good starting point
Thanks guys for your valuable inputs.
Even the occassional visitors even in drizzles or one time big time have valuable lessons.
The latest water splash was the critique of defeatism.
As my tag line in twitter said: We live, we learn.
Thanks guys for your valuable inputs.
Even the occassional visitors even in drizzles or one time big time have valuable lessons.
The latest water splash was the critique of defeatism.
As my tag line in twitter said: We live, we learn.
“…in our country we have GABAY INC. (guide) run mostly by govt agencies to help would be entrepreneurs in mentoring and research, etc. it tells them what they are up against, what they must do and how to make their business sustainable. it also tells about budgeting, the operating cost is taken from the income, and from not the capital. but most importantly, they must have business plan that includes the ground work, licenses and so on….” – Kasambahay
Yup, no need for people in the diaspora to come home and start teaching what they learned. A lot of people, not just Pinoys, have poor money IQ. I think the Jews and Chinese in general are exceptions. But I could be wrong.
Bombays have five six they beat chinoys and jews….joke
seriously most ceos and c suits all over have Indian blood.
lots of indians have permanent residency status in philippines and quite fluent with our languages.
Yes
cv, pardon but my funny bone is tickling me, haha. of course, pinoys have poor money IQ, they just dont have enough money! at saka, proverbially, the scots from scotland are stingiest with money, that is way, maybe, they make one of the best whiskey. gotta taste good every drop, nothing wasted.
at saka uli, if people from the diaspora come home and start teaching, I would be inclined to ask to see their credentials! make sure they are not scammers and not traffickers of human organs. or people traffickers, or cult recruiters, or pedos, or extremists, or neo nazis out to cause trouble. in my locality, we are vigilant and keep lookout for new faces and duly inform our baranggay tanods of their presence. and we have cctvs.
“cv, pardon but my funny bone is tickling me, haha. of course, pinoys have poor money IQ, they just dont have enough money!” – Kasambahay
Yes, I remember when AIDS was in the news, my relatives back there said it meant Acute Income Deficiency.
“at saka uli, if people from the diaspora come home and start teaching, I would be inclined to ask to see their credentials!” – Kasambahay
Of course. Joey should take note of that. It is easy to say “don’t make it complicated.” But the reality is that often times it is complicated.
Definitely a good starting point.
Some links
https://www.da.gov.ph/services/agribusiness-and-marketing-assistance/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://www.da.gov.ph/services/agricultural-credit-and-financing-programs/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
I will search for Gabay and its predecessors
https://www.da.gov.ph/sagip-saka-act-to-make-farmers-more-competitive/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://ati2.da.gov.ph/ati-car/content/article/jaila-s-sagpa-ey/da-ati-rtc-car-sustains-its-support-tgp-operation-region?utm_source=chatgpt.com
✅ Government cold storage facilities (Central & Southern Luzon, and elsewhere)
Purpose:
Reduce post-harvest losses for farmers and fisherfolk
Stabilize food supply and prices year-round
Support rural livelihoods by improving market access
Strengthen the cold chain from farm to market
Improve food security and resilience
Key takeaway:
Cold storage is meant to help local producers but only if the system is designed to prioritize them.
⚖️ Will these facilities favor farmers or importers?
They can favor either, depending on how the program is structured.
✔ If designed properly, it favors local farmers
This happens when:
Facilities are located near production areas
Pricing is subsidized or tiered
Priority access is given to cooperatives and smallholders
Integrated with government buying and market support
❌ If designed poorly, it favors importers
This happens when:
Facilities are near ports and big cities
Pricing is market-rate
No priority rules or volume caps
The cold storage is treated as “neutral infrastructure”
📌 Conclusion
Cold storage is a powerful tool for food security and farmer income—but it can become a tool for importers if not governed with farmer-first rules.