SAN CARLOS CITY, Pangasinan—This city keeps its lead as the top mango producer in Pangasinan for the last 15 years and shows its supremacy through the holding of another year of the Mango/Bamboo Festival set this April 29.

Mayor Julian Resuello told local newsmen that San Carlenians have mastered the mango industry and in fact the skilled workers in mango farming including capitalists go to 13 other provinces in the country to share their skills and earn money by taking care of other mango farms in Cagayan Valley, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija, Zambales, Bataan, Pampanga, Tarlac, Ilocos Sur,
Ilocos Norte, among others.

“We have very sweet mangoes here perhaps due to our soil,” Resuello said. The city is known for its sweet carabao mangoes. Describing mango growing as “very profitable”, Resuello said each kilo of three pieces of green mangoes sells at P21 while ripe mangoes are priced at P40 a kilo.

It was during Resuello’s incumbency that the Mango/Bamboo Festival was launched sometime in 2000 to create a wide market for their two famous products which abound here, mangoes and bamboos. Resuello said when the city made its initial festival that capitalized on its famous products, other areas in Pangasinan like Dagupan City for its Bangus Festival, Binmaley for its Sugpo and Malaga Festival, Villasis for its Talong Festival, Calasiao for
its Puto Festival, and Mapandan for its Pandan Festival did the same.

He said that even mangoes produced in other provinces are brought here for classification by their experts through the city’s various mango buying stations. Then, container vans pick them up and then sell them for export.

Domingo Resuello, city agriculturist, said that the city has about 2,200 hectares planted to mangoes. Each hectare yields 14 metric tons of mangoes every harvest time but each mango tree can have its production only every two years. He said every year only one half of the total mango trees bear fruits,
thus their yearly production is estimated at 15,400 metric tons.

He said that in the Ilocos region, Pangasinan is the top mango producer and in the entire province, it is the city that is the leading mango producer.

Incidentally, this city is the biggest in terms of land area and population in the Ilocos region, according to the mayor.

The city with 86 barangays and about 170,000 population has about 200,000 mango trees and of this number about 150,000 are already fruit-bearing. There are about 6,000 families that depend on the industry for their livelihood.

The other popular produce here, bamboos, are plentiful along the city’s 150- kilometer stretch of rivers and creeks.

The dominant bamboo variety here is locally known as caoayan tua which is the kind used for making nipa huts and other furniture made of bamboo. There are about 15 barangays which are involved in bamboo industry.

Because of its popularity in bamboo industry, the city has its own bamboo market where produce from bamboo like nipa huts, baskets, lamp shades, furniture, cabinets, among others are on display and traded for three days, starting from Thursday to Saturday. Traders from other provinces come here to
buy the produce and sell these to outside provinces.

But unlike other towns or cities which hold their grandiose festivals, San Carlos’ will just have a modest celebration like the street dancing where the participants are clad in costumes using these two materials among others and through competitions like fastest maker of basket and cookfest showing different ways of mango food preparations.