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Freakonomics: Fruits, Vegetables are Cheaper the further away?
By philobean | September 28, 2007
I spent the first 21 years of my life with little fruits and vegetables in my diet. (And I grew up in the Philippines.) Like many other developing countries, the Philippines is often perceived (not quite accurately) to be an agricultural economy. Assuming this as true (after all, we do grow *some* export quality fruits), one would think fruits would come cheaper closer to home. To my shock (and perhaps to the shock of many other OFWs who’ve come before me), this is far from the case!
Lets take the case of bananas. I bought a *six-pack (of bananas)* just last weekend at the Cold Storage supermarket across Somerset MRT Station. The six-pack was stickered doubly with the labels: ‘Dole’ and ‘From the Philippines’. How much? A few cents (50 if my memory does not defraud me). 50 Singaporean cents: 14-15 pesos.
Months back. I purchased 18 pieces of that (*super-sweet*) midgets of bananas for 30 pesos, give or take, from a twentysomething man in tattered clothes manning a fruit-laden wooden pushcart along Vito Cruz (now Pablo Ocampo) street. The made-in-the-Philippines bananas I purchased from a supermarket at the heart of Singapore’s shopping district cost almost the same (on a gram-for-gram basis). Yet, quality-wise, the 50 cent six-pack trumps (by far) the 30-peso bunch of eighteen.
Fruits and vegetables are a simple matter really. You don’t really have to do a lot to sell them. (They *are* a commodity after all.) Why would we go through the trouble of exporting *top brass* produce when, I’m sure, a local market exists for the products without substantial marginal losses to the topline?
Topics: A little political, Business |