Farmers call it an ongoing “success story.” Marveling at the surprisingly good turn-out of the four-week-old Sabalu market, the Department of Lands and Natural Resources said it continues to draw more and more vendors to what may soon be a weekly community habit.<\/p>\n
More than 22 vendors have signed up for last week’s market, a significant improvement from the number of original vendors it started with four weeks ago.<\/p>\n
DLNR Spokesperson Marian Concepcion-Teregeyo said from the 12 vendors that signed up during the first week, only four vendors actually showed up.<\/p>\n
“Those four were the lucky ones because they earned money. The farmers are really happy about it,” said Ms. Teregeyo.<\/p>\n
With the growing demand of booth lots, DLNR may have to create more room at the 4H Club site to accommodate the increasing number of interested vendors.<\/p>\n
DLNR Secretary Joaquin Tenorio also expressed market expansion plans to include seafood products.<\/p>\n
“People are selling fishes off the road anyway so we are also looking at providing space for them,” said Mr. Tenorio.<\/p>\n
In the immediate future, fresh flowers, indigenous ornaments, and locally cooked food may also be included in the items for sale at the weekly market.<\/p>\n
“We continue to be open to suggestions from farmers on what they want to sell so that we can find out and provide everyone what they need,” he added.<\/p>\n
DLNR is also looking at the possibility of tapping meat producers to be one of the group of vendors at the Sabalu market.<\/p>\n
“We have US agriculture certified slaughterhouses and they can be slaughtered and certified by US inspectors and sold to the public,” the secretary said.<\/p>\n
Farmers at last Saturday’s market admitted they are gaining considerably from this weekly stint.<\/p>\n
They further said that this weekly affair has proved positive in promoting what farmers on Saipan need.<\/p>\n
The Sabalu market has been initiated by DLNR to help farmers efficiently market their agricultural produce and eventually expand local production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Farmers call it an ongoing “success story.” Marveling at the surprisingly good turn-out of the four-week-old Sabalu market, the Department of Lands and Natural Resources said it continues to draw more and more vendors to what may soon be a weekly community habit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}