Commercial Sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas) Production Practices at Barangay Basca, Aringay, La Union

Abstract

The study was conducted to determine the socio-economic profile of the respondents, the cultural management and marketing practices in sweetpotato production, and to determine the problems they encountered in producing it. The study was conducted from November 2015 to December 2015. The needed information was gathered through the use of survey questionnaire and was analyzed using percentages. It was revealed that the sweetpotato growers were mostly males, married, elementary level/graduates, and at their middle ages ranging from 50 to 60 years old. Most of the respondents are tenants of the farm they are tilling. In land preparation, all of the respondents clear their farms manually by plowing with the used of animal to loosen the soil and to control the weeds, and by uprooting the weeds if it appears. In terms of fertilizer applications, all of them claimed that they are applying it to their crops and they choose sandy loam soil for their sweetpotato production. Majority of them practiced planting the vines with a distance of one foot by two feet. Vine cuttings are the material used in planting, being planted diagonally. Most of the farmers are planting sweetpotato in the month of May as they only produce it during the wet season. They preferred Miracle variety of sweetpotato. It was also found out that the respondents practiced the crop rotation rice-camote-legumes to control the occurrence of pests and diseases. The common pest encountered is sweetpotato weevil while the disease encountered was scurf. Further, all of the respondents harvested their crops after three months and/or when the leaves started to change its color from green to yellow. They cleaned the tubers by hand washing, categorized it according to size from big, medium, small, and extra small, and then sun dried the sweetpotato as it is ready for selling. Among the problems encountered by the respondents in producing their crops are inadequate transportation to transport their products especially in rainy season, occurrence of pest and diseases, and lack of capital to buy inputs are the problems encountered by the respondents.