ROXAS CITY, Philippines — In a province already famous for crabs, oysters, scallops and freshly landed fish, Capiz spent three days showing visitors that its food story can stretch far beyond the seafood table.
From September 10 to 12, small farmers, food makers, artisans, cooperatives and community groups gathered at The Plant Farm in Pueblo de Panay for Capiz’s first three-day Slow Food Community Pop-Up Earth Market.
The stalls offered everything from organically grown vegetables and seasonal fruits to wild honey, fresh seafood, regional coffee, chocolates, native delicacies and artisanal bread.
There was even laing pizza.
But behind the unusual menu was a much more serious idea:
Can a market help preserve local food traditions while giving small producers a better way to make money?
Producers came from across Panay
The event brought together participants from Capiz, Iloilo and Aklan, turning the Roxas City venue into a small showcase of Panay Island’s agricultural, culinary and craft diversity.
Panay News reported that the market featured microenterprises, smallholder farmers, food artisans, rural cooperatives and community organizations.
Products included fresh vegetables, seasonal fruit, sustainably gathered wild honey and seafood, along with value-added coconut products, coffee, chocolate and locally baked goods.
Traditional crafts were also part of the mix.
Visitors could find handcrafted household products as well as Barong Tagalog and Filipiniana pieces made with natural abaca fiber.
The point was not simply to place products on tables.
Organizers wanted producers to meet consumers directly — allowing shoppers to understand where their food came from, how it was made and who earned a living producing it.
What exactly is an ‘Earth Market’?
The name can sound like branding for an eco-themed bazaar.
But within the international Slow Food movement, an Earth Market refers to a particular philosophy of farmers’ markets.
Slow Food says participating markets are intended to emphasize local and seasonal foods, short supply chains, small-scale producers, environmentally responsible production and fair prices for both farmers and consumers.
The model is built around Slow Food’s famous three-word principle:
Good. Clean. Fair.
“Good” refers broadly to quality food connected to local culture.
“Clean” emphasizes production that respects ecosystems and biodiversity.
“Fair” means consumers should have reasonable access to food while producers receive appropriate compensation for their labor.
Earth Markets are also meant to function as community and educational spaces rather than ordinary retail venues.
Slow Food says they can involve tastings, demonstrations, conversations with producers and activities teaching consumers about local ingredients and food systems.
That puts Capiz’s pop-up in a much larger international movement.
Capiz officials backed the experiment
The Capiz Provincial Government co-sponsored and participated in the event through the Provincial Tourism and Cultural Affairs Office and Capiz Ecology Park and Cultural Village.
Provincial Information Officer and concurrent human resources chief Atty. Luvim D. Amores, representing Gov. Fredenil Castro, said the administration supports local farmers, sustainable gastronomy and community-driven environmental initiatives.
She also highlighted food security and the preservation of Indigenous and traditional foodways as provincial priorities.
The Capiz Times separately reported that both the provincial government and Roxas City Government supported the September 10–12 event.
That government backing matters because small-scale producers often struggle with one problem that has nothing to do with growing or making good food:
getting it in front of enough paying customers.
A market can solve one of the farmer’s oldest problems
Farmers and small food producers are often at their weakest economically after the product leaves the farm.
They may depend on traders, consolidators or several layers of middlemen before their goods finally reach consumers.
Every layer can take a share of the final selling price.
Slow Food’s Earth Market model tries to shorten that chain by giving producers a venue to sell more directly.
The organization says the approach can reduce the distance between farmer and consumer while giving buyers the chance to understand who produced their food and how prices were determined.
For a small cacao processor, beekeeper, vegetable grower or coffee producer, that direct connection can offer more than one weekend of sales.
It can lead to repeat customers, restaurant buyers, tourism exposure or partnerships with retailers.
Slow Food Community Capiz chairman and spokesperson Dr. Harold Buenvenida told Bombo Radyo that the pop-up market could help introduce and promote Capiz’s local products while giving priority to farmers, food producers, businesses, cooperatives and community organizations from Capiz, Iloilo and Aklan.
Why Capiz is an obvious place to try it
Food already forms a major part of Capiz’s tourism identity.
The Department of Tourism describes the province as the “Seafood Capital of the Philippines,” highlighting its abundant fresh catch and food-related attractions.
Government tourism campaigns this year have increasingly tried to move beyond simply telling visitors to eat seafood.
During Capiztahan 2026, the Department of Tourism and provincial tourism officials promoted a wider gastronomy-and-heritage experience involving traditional cooking, fishing culture, local delicacies, community tourism and the province’s historical sites.
The traditional surambaw fishing method, for example, has itself become part of the province’s food-tourism narrative.
Large square nets mounted on bamboo frames are lowered and raised to harvest fish, shrimp and other marine resources — knowledge passed through generations of fishing communities.
That gives Capiz something valuable in a tourism market where many destinations can offer beautiful beaches:
a food story rooted in place.
An oyster eaten in Capiz is not simply an oyster.
It can be connected to aquaculture, fishing families, coastal ecosystems, recipes and generations of local knowledge.
That is exactly the kind of story the Slow Food movement tries to preserve.
Capiz is also trying to give local products a permanent home
The Earth Market arrives while the provincial government is pursuing another project designed to expand market access for Capiz-made products.
In August, officials began planning the proposed Maragtas Specialty Shop and Pasalubong Center, envisioned as a centralized outlet where local micro, small and medium enterprises could display and sell Capiz products.
The two projects are different.
The Maragtas center is intended as a more permanent retail platform.
The Slow Food pop-up focuses heavily on direct interaction between small producers, consumers, culture and sustainable food.
But together, they point toward the same economic strategy:
Make local products easier to find, easier to sell and easier for visitors to associate with Capiz.
That can matter enormously for small businesses whose products are strong but whose distribution is weak.
The region has already seen how big Slow Food can become
Capiz’s three-day gathering may have been modest compared with international food festivals, but Western Visayas is no stranger to the Slow Food movement.
Just across the region, Bacolod and Negros Occidental hosted the first Terra Madre Asia & Pacific in November 2025.
The event brought together farmers, fishers, cooks, Indigenous leaders, artisans and food advocates from across Asia and the Pacific around the same concept of good, clean and fair food.
Organizers later reported approximately 75,000 visitors and ₱46.59 million in event-related sales during the five-day gathering.
Its street-food exhibition alone attracted about 50,000 visitors across 107 exhibitors.
Those figures do not mean a Capiz pop-up market will automatically produce similar results.
But they demonstrate that sustainable gastronomy is capable of moving beyond an advocacy niche and becoming a meaningful tourism and economic activity.
That makes Capiz’s smaller experiment worth watching.
‘Local’ does not automatically mean sustainable
There is also an important distinction behind the feel-good marketing.
Selling something produced locally does not automatically make it environmentally sustainable.
The Slow Food model places emphasis on how food is produced, not just how close the farm is to the market.
A local product could still be produced through practices that damage soil, overexploit marine resources or generate excessive waste.
That is why Slow Food’s Earth Market guidelines link market access with biodiversity, seasonality, environmental responsibility and fair labor practices.
For Capiz, that becomes particularly important because much of the province’s food identity depends on natural resources.
Its oysters, mussels, fish and shellfish depend on healthy coastal ecosystems.
Its vegetables, coffee, cacao and coconuts depend on productive land and predictable climate conditions.
Promoting those foods while degrading the ecosystems that produce them would ultimately undermine the very culinary identity the province hopes to market.
Even Capiz’s seafood industry is being pushed toward sustainability
That tension is already visible in the province’s aquaculture sector.
The Department of Science and Technology has been supporting new oyster and mussel cultivation techniques in Capiz, including Single Oyster and Longline Mussel technologies, aimed at producing cleaner, more marketable shellfish while improving industry practices.
Capiz is a major Philippine producer of oysters and mussels, and many local families depend on aquaculture for income.
That makes sustainability an economic issue as much as an environmental one.
If coastal resources decline, the loss is not merely ecological.
It reaches fishermen, processors, restaurants, tourism businesses and household incomes.
An Earth Market can help tell that full story to consumers.
The most valuable product may be the producer’s story
Modern supermarket shopping tends to hide the people behind food.
A shopper sees a bag of coffee.
A bottle of honey.
A chocolate bar.
A piece of bread.
At a producer-centered market, the seller may also be the farmer, baker, beekeeper or food maker.
Slow Food argues that this connection helps consumers understand what they are buying while giving producers an opportunity to explain their techniques, ingredients and prices.
That can be particularly valuable for traditional foods.
Industrial products often compete primarily on price.
Heritage products can compete on something different:
story, origin, craftsmanship and identity.
For a small Capiz producer who cannot win a price war against a mass-market brand, that distinction can become an economic advantage.
The real test begins after the tents come down
The September 10–12 market is over.
That means the easiest part can now be measured: people showed up, products were displayed and producers received exposure.
The more important results will take longer to see.
Do shoppers return to the producers they discovered?
Do restaurants begin ordering their ingredients?
Do farmers receive better prices?
Do artisans gain new retail channels?
Does Capiz hold another Earth Market?
And can a three-day pop-up eventually become a regular marketplace capable of sustaining businesses throughout the year?
Organizers said they hope the event can pave the way for future Earth Markets and other environmentally oriented trade initiatives in Western Visayas.
That possibility may ultimately be the most important outcome of the first event.
Because this was never really just about laing pizza
The unusual foods make the easy headline.
Laing pizza.
Wild honey.
Local chocolate.
Single-origin coffee.
Fresh seafood.
Abaca clothing.
But underneath those products is a larger economic experiment.
Capiz is testing whether farmers, fishers, artisans and consumers can be brought closer together — and whether protecting food traditions can also create livelihoods.
Slow Food’s idea is that agriculture, biodiversity, culture and commerce do not have to compete.
A traditional ingredient can survive because somebody still grows it.
A farmer can continue growing it because somebody is willing to buy it.
And a consumer may be willing to pay for it because the producer has finally been given a place to tell its story.
Capiz’s first three-day Earth Market has already closed. The real cliffhanger is whether it was simply a successful weekend — or the first glimpse of a permanent new market for Panay’s food heritage.
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