PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — After a summer researching potato farming in Aroostook County, Mariel Josh Tiongson left the U.S. with a lot of data, observations and aspirations.
Tiongson, an agricultural sciences student from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, came to Maine this past summer after searching for a country to visit as part of her research into potatoes — a vegetable she thinks can help solve food insecurity in her native Philippines and around the world. “A lot of factors opened my eyes to how much my country and this world suffer from hunger and food scarcity,” said Tiongson.
Last year, Tiongson reached out to a range of agriculture agencies around the world and eventually got in touch with Kathleen Haynes, a long-time potato geneticist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Maryland who has worked in Maine. Haynes helped arrange for Tiongson to study in Aroostook County, and she spent the summer researching at USDA offices and visiting farms, while living at the Presque Isle homestead of retired potato engineer John Cancelarich and his wife Johnny.
Potatoes are a still small sector in the Philippines, but Tiongson, who grew up in Manila, believes that expanding cultivation of the starchy tuber could help feed the island country of 100 million people. She sees her goal to work as an agronomist as a “mission,” after an encounter with an older construction worker on the bus one night in Manila.
“He placed his patched backpack in front of him and opened it. There was only a brown paper bag in it. When he opened it, he got a piece of pandesal, a kind of bread, and ate it. His hands were shaking. I knew he was hungry,” Tiongson said. “I felt that I should do something about it.”
Tiongson’s research in Maine is part of her undergraduate thesis, comparing potato farming systems in the U.S. and the Philippines. “I want to eventually adapt or devise techniques to improve the production in my country,” Tiongson said.
Maine’s 54,000 acres of potato farms represents only five percent of the U.S. potato harvest, but “it’s pretty huge here compared to the Philippines,” said Cancelarich, the 85-year-old retired engineer who hosted Tiongson.
Cancelarich tried unsuccessfully to get Tiongson a tour of the McCain Foods potato processing plant in Easton, but Tiongson “learned a lot” through different farmers, including the Maine Potato Board’s Porter Seed Farm, and the USDA data. “The more you’re around her, you realize she’s intelligent and humble,” Cancelarich said, adding that he hopes she returns for a graduate degree in the U.S.
The Benguet mountain region of the Philippines are home to much of the country’s commercial potato cultivation on hillside terraces that resemble the Andes, the potato’s homeland, moreso than the rolling fields of Maine. But Tiongson thinks the systematic approach to farming, disease and pest management and storage that she’s documented will be of value to farmers in the Philippines — and northern varieties may fare well there, too.
Already, along with varieties from Peru, Filipino farmers are growing potato varieties imported from New Brunswick, Canada, including Conestoga, Cal-White and Cherokee, the latter a high-yielding varietal bred by the USDA in Maine in 1941.
“I absolutely think that Philippine farmers could adopt most of the U.S. growing practices over time,” Tiongson said. The Igorots, the agrarian ethnic group of the Luzon island of the Philippines, are “known for their terrace farming, which is done traditionally yet effective.”
“Generally, Filipino farmers are very innovative and flexible, and I believe things will speed up with the help of an increase in extension workers. So with farmers gaining knowledge on technology, I’m sure they can do well.”
