Kidapawan celebrates bountiful fruit harvests

KIDAPAWAN CITY – The Kidapawan’s grandest festival dubbed as, Kasadyasa TimpupoFestival,” kicked off on Wednesday with fruit float parade and marketing of several fruits at the city’s pavilion. Timpupo is alumadterm for bountiful harvests. The harvest of fruits, like mangoosteen, lanzones, rambutan and the exotic Durian, started early June, months after the province of North Cotabato and other parts of Central Mindanao experienced long dry spell. Mayor Joseph Evangelista said the city government intends to institutionalize the fruit fest to make it known to Filipinos here and abroad that the city is, indeed, the ‘real fruit basket’ of the country. He said the city produces the country’s best varieties of Durian, mangoosteen, andrambutan. The fruits sold in different parts of Mindanao come from Kidapawan City.We still have to improve the marketing of our main products here, which are our fruits so that we would be known to many parts of the country as the real fruit basket,” Evangelista said. Also, the festival would be expanded to towns of Magpet and Makilala which are also considered fruit baskets of North Cotabato. It was said the celebration of theTimpupoFest has been shelved for at least six years when lanzones trees failed to yield fruits due to muzzle scale insects infestation.Many of these trees died when hit by the insects.It took years before they started to bear fruits again, according to Cotabato Governor Lala Mendoza. We had problems with pollination because of the weather and infestation that’s why we didn’t produce fruits during those years,” Mendoza said. Among the activities during theTimpupoFest include tribal day, which highlights the culture and tradition of the Manobos of North Cotabato Search forBinibining KalikasanMusikahansaTimpupowith theDumakiband regional banana investment and marketing forum business matching color run and night run thematic costume parade and live jamming at theTimpupo.