A video recently surfaced showing vegetable vendors spraying water on their produce—using their mouths instead of sprayers. It was not a sight of ingenuity but of utter disregard for hygiene. To spit on the very food that people will bring home to their families is nothing short of alarming.

When one sees carrots, eggplants, and leafy greens glistening with moisture at the market, the first thought is freshness. But after that video, one cannot help but ask: whose breath, whose saliva coats those vegetables? Freshness quickly loses its charm when it dawns on us that the dew-like mist might be droplets from a vendor’s lungs. Suddenly, what was meant to entice becomes a repulsive image of contamination.

Indeed, these vendors are merely trying to keep their goods appealing. Vegetables wilt quickly under the tropical heat, and a dried bunch of pechay will not sell as well as one that looks freshly plucked. Yet their choice of method—substituting a spray bottle with their mouths—is more than just cutting corners. It is a careless gamble with public health. If even one of them carries a communicable disease, every unsuspecting buyer becomes a potential victim.

Diseases do not announce themselves. Coughs can be hidden, infections can be invisible, and carriers may appear perfectly healthy. This is precisely why such practices are dangerous. Saliva is a bodily fluid, and science has long established its role in transmitting illnesses. To pretend that blowing or spraying with the mouth is harmless is to mock common sense itself.

One cannot help but reflect on the golden rule that should guide every human interaction: do not do unto others what you would not want done unto you. Would any of these vendors willingly eat food misted with another person’s saliva? Would they serve such to their own children? It is the most basic appeal to conscience, yet it seems drowned out by the daily desperation of eking out a living.

Some might argue that poverty drives such behavior. Indeed, sprayers cost money, and every peso counts when margins are thin. But cleanliness is not a privilege of the rich; it is a duty that transcends class. A spray bottle costs less than the shame of being exposed to such a degrading practice, and certainly less than the cost of someone falling ill. Sometimes, common sense is cheaper than stinginess.

What makes the matter worse is the silence around it. Buyers walk past, either unaware of the practice or unwilling to confront it. Authorities turn a blind eye, perhaps dismissing it as too trivial a concern compared to larger issues. Yet this is how neglect festers: little things that appear harmless pile up until they form a culture of carelessness, where standards collapse and lives are risked in the name of convenience.

This practice must stop, and it will only stop if people speak up. Information drives change; awareness pushes behavior. Vendors must be told, firmly but patiently, that such shortcuts harm more than they help. Communities must step in to remind them that vegetables symbolize nourishment and life, not contamination. In the end, all it takes is a little conscience, a little common sense, and the humility to accept correction for the sake of the public’s health.

Many of our smallholder farmers in the Philippines still farm the same way their forefathers did several years ago. Traditional farming practices continue to work for some, but new methods can help many substantially improve yields, preserve soil quality, and protect natural resources—thereby supporting the government’s twin goals of attaining food security and increasing farmers’ incomes.

Farmers themselves can be taught innovative practices more effectively with the right information to enhance their knowledge and skills. For instance, advances in satellite mapping and information and communications technologies (ICTs), or the so-called digitization of agriculture, are considered “game changers” that could speed up the transformation of the agricultural landscape in the countryside.

Farming is becoming more precise, resulting in increased productivity. As the country’s population grows by leaps and bounds, agriculture should not stagnate but instead continuously develop new techniques to grow more food in less space while conserving water.

Lettuce production through greenhouse hydroponics is a step toward this goal.
Hydroponics is a system of growing crops without soil, often called soilless farming. Through such technology, plant roots grow in a liquid nutrient solution or in moist inert materials. The liquid nutrient solution is a mixture of essential plant nutrients dissolved in water.

Plant roots are suspended either in a static liquid solution or in a continuously flowing nutrient mixture. The hydroponic growing system requires sustained “tender loving care” (TLC) for the crops, in contrast to traditional farming systems.

It is worth noting that this cutting-edge technology is slowly gaining ground in our region, targeting the youth in urban and peri-urban centers.

In fact, just this June we witnessed the unveiling and ceremonial turnover of a solar-powered hydroponic system inside a school campus in Tacloban City.

It was a victory for the agriculture stakeholders—especially the students, teachers, and surrounding communities of the Tacloban National Agricultural School (TNAS) in Brgy. 94-A, Basper, this city.

This initiative, supported by the Department of Agriculture, aims to help the younger generation adopt modern farming technologies in pursuit of sustainable agriculture and food security.

The government is investing heavily in such agricultural facilities to ensure that more young people are enticed to pursue farming as a vocation. Gone are the days of backbreaking farm chores. By harnessing the potential of the Filipino youth, letting them learn the ropes, and adopting new ways of growing crops, there truly is a glimmer of hope for the future of Philippine agriculture.