Three years ago, I wrote a column extolling the virtues of ube, that sweet-tasting, purple-colored yam ubiquitous in Philippine shakes, cakes, cookies, and creams. Not to mention, of course, that holiest-of-holy Filipino yum-yum called halo-halo.
“That wonderful purple ingredient,” I wrote, “has become one of the grand passions of an otherwise uninspired culinary life,” namely mine.
My column was inspired by a piece in the New York Times predicting global fame for the popular Philippine dessert. “Ube, a slightly nutty-tasting, vanilla-accented purple yam from the Philippines,” food writer Kim Severson had noted, “is showing up on lots of trend lists and in all kinds of foods and drinks, from pies and waffles to lattes and ube coladas.”
The following year, curious to see if it was true, I made a point of searching for the purple stuff during an annual visit to my native Southern California. And, sure enough, there it was, newly hatched by a company called Wanderlust Creamery just then opening a brand-new ice cream parlor in Costa Mesa. Its featured product: yup, ube malted crunch, described in the menu as “malted milk, purple yams and crunchy malted milk pieces.”
I’ll never forget the day my wife and I made the two-hour drive from our desert abode to that coastal town just to savor that much-anticipated dessert. It was as yummy as advertised. And I couldn’t help but reflect on how, as a native Californian, I’d never even heard of ube until moving to the Philippines late in life. And yet, here it was, uncannily close to the building in which I’d been employed sans ube for years.
So, I concluded, the New York Times was right. Which brings us to my point here: so right, in fact, that Philippine farmers are barely keeping up. “In Sunnyside, Queens,” the newspaper reported in a recent update, “people line up outside a bakery before it opens to buy a brioche doughnut whose glaze shines a startling purple. In Paris, people sip purple lattes with a mellow, nutty scent. In Melbourne, Australia, a purple tinge gives hot cross buns a gentle sweetness. The common ingredient in these items is ube…and the world’s new hunger for it is starting to strain the people who farm it.”
The irony: while exports have quadrupled to more than 200 tons annually, production has slipped from more than 15,000 tons in 2021 to just 14,000 today, most of it sold locally. “The gross supply barely meets the demand,” Cheryl Natividad-Caballero told the Times. She’s an undersecretary of the Philippines’ agricultural department in charge of high-value crops. “Given the increasing requirements from the increasing demand,” she said, “we have to now improve the system.”
Which may be easier said than done. One reason is the dearth of materials for reseeding, i.e. the cut-up pieces of ube needed by farmers to grow new yams. With demand increasing and prices rising, many are selling too much crop without leaving enough to replant.
Another problem is climate change’s habit of mixing up patterns of rain and sun, both of which the yams require. And too, an increasing number of typhoons are ripping them out of the ground.
All of it exacerbated, according to experts, by decreasing government aid. For this year, the Times reports, Congress has trimmed the Dept. of Agriculture’s budget for ube by 10 percent to a mere 10 million pesos.
But have no fear, the cavalry is near. With the European market for ube veritably booming, the Philippine Consulate General in Frankfurt, Germany, told The Manla Times in 2024 that “ube diplomacy” may be looming. “Filipinos are known for…our ability to be happy and resilient,” Maria Yvette Banzon-Abalos declared, and “maybe ube can be that channel.”
Her proposal: make the purple stuff a global symbol of the Philippines. Which is fine with me. As long as I can get some more of that insanely delicious ube malted crunch.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist, author, and broadcaster with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book is Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
