Harvesting and Marketing Farm Products
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Harvesting involves proper ways or practices of gathering food crops, particularly vegetable crops. It also includes the right time to harvest and what to do after harvest. A good foresight on what, when, where, and how to harvest will prevent serious deterioration or loss of crop.
Read and Learn
Selected of Manure Vegetables and Other Produce
Experience plant growers know the right time to gather the crops. Timeliness in harvesting crops is important, especially in handling perishables farm crops.
Leafy vegetables, such as pechay, mustard lettuce, cabbage are harvested while they are fresh, tender, and green, fruit crops such as eggplant, okra, and cucumber are harvested with the same conditions as the leafy vegetables. Roots crops such as sweet potato, cassava, togue, and ubi are harvested before they are fully matured or else they become fibrous.
Harvesting Techniques
To ensure the better quality of produce, observe these proper techniques in harvesting:
Gather the vegetables in the morning. At this time, vegetables are tender specially the leafy ones. They also have the best favor and appearance.
Avoid damaging and injuring vegetables while harvesting, so that they will reach the market in perfect condition and command better prices.
Gather the garden fruit crops, like beans, tomatoes, eggplants, okra, and other vegetables crops, before they mature and place them in a box or container storing or marketing the crops.
Wash all root crops after harvest. Drain the water or air-dry them before storing or marketing the crops.
Pack the crops of the same stage of ripeness to avoid rotting.
To maintain the freshness and nutritive value of the vegetables, pick them only at the time they are needed for cooking ar for selling.
Marketing Garden Products
Marketing is the buying and selling of farm products from the producers or farmers to the consumers. These are the three methods of marketing farm products:
Procedures like farmers usually go to the market to sell their farm products.
Selling through a wholesaler or dealer- The wholesaler who buyin bulk usually comes to the farm and do the harvesting themselves. They bring the fruits/ crops to the marketplace and do the selling to the retailers. For examples, the wholesaler enters into a contract to buy the fruits of a mango tree even before they start to bear fruit. The wholesaler who buys in bulk from the farmers does an ocular inspection during flowering time. When the mangoes are ready for harvest, the wholesaler mangoes the harvesting and bring them to the market. This practices is done for produce that are far from the market site.
Direct selling- This is done by farmers themselves. They harvest the crops/ products and bring them to the market and sell them directly to the consumers. This is the usually practice for vegetable products.
Marketing through cooperatives- there are so many crops growers in the country who do not know where to sell
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