BENGUET PROVINCE, Philippines. In New York City, people line up before a bakery opens to buy a brioche donut whose icing glows a striking purple color. In Paris, people drink lattes that are purple in color and have a mild, nutty flavor. In Melbourne, Australia, the purple hue gives hot cross buns a subtle sweetness.
A common ingredient in these products is ube, or Philippine purple yam, and a new world hunger for it is beginning to stress the people who grow it. The country grows more than 14,000 tons of it per year and is considered the world's leading producer.
Climbing up a hill and among the trees in Benguet, a mountainous province in the Philippines, Teresita Emilio scanned the ground and discovered a stump almost invisible to the naked eye. She slowly probed around it with the metal rod before using her gloved hands.
“I have to be careful. I might damage it,” said Emilio, 62, as he stuck his hand through the narrow hole. She pulled.
Click. Wrapping her arms around it, she pulled out what looked like a plump tree branch the size of a newborn. At the base of its head, where the root joined the stem, a violet color emanated. Raw ube.
“It's not that much,” Emilio said.
As ube has gained popularity around the world, Filipino farmers like Emilio are struggling to keep up. At home, the tuber, which is native to this country and grown mainly in small seasonal plots, has long been used to make jams, ice cream and cakes. Now its photogenic hue and subtle flavor have fueled a viral craze, forcing the Philippines to supply more even as climate change ravages crops and growers in China and Vietnam ramp up production of their own purple yam.
“This is a new matcha,” said Cheryl Natividad-Caballero, the undersecretary of agriculture in charge of growing the country’s prized crops, including ube. “Given the increasing demands caused by growing demand, we need to improve the system.”
Major UN Food and Agriculture databases do not contain data on exports of ube from other types of yam, but officials and scientists say it is safe to assume the Philippines is the world's leading producer. The country, which has a long tradition of using ube for sweets, is virtually alone in growing the flavorful variety used for desserts.
“We are still the leading producer,” Natividad-Caballero said. “For a long time, other countries didn't even know what ube was and even confused it with the purple varieties of sweet potatoes. But they are completely different.”
Annual production of ube has fallen from more than 15,000 tonnes in 2021 to about 14,000 tonnes in the past two years, with much of it coming from local consumption, according to government data. However, in recent years, exports have quadrupled to more than 200 tons per year, with more than half of this volume going to the United States. The Philippines has even been forced to import some ube from Vietnam to meet local demand.
“The total supply barely meets demand,” Natividad-Caballero said.
All this fuss about ube is new to Emilio. As a girl, she learned to grow it in the Benguet hills, following her mother through rows of pineapples, turmeric and pandan. The tubers she dug up were destined for neighbors and customers who had climbed the mountain. It wasn't like the appetite for the world she now feeds.
“I had so much ube back then,” Emilio said. “I would even throw them away.”
“They are now on the path to extinction,” she said.
One reason for the ube shortage is the lack of “planting material,” the cut pieces of ube that farmers bury to grow new ones.
Emilio said farmers like her were selling almost their entire ube crop because of the higher price. By the end of the harvest season there is little left to cut and plant. Although it can be grown from seeds, this method is extremely slow and unreliable.
About 12 hours south by car, Jenelyn Bañares, a ube maker in the rural town of San Francisco in southern Luzon's Quezon province, faced the same conundrum. “I tried to buy from other farmers, but they also don’t have planting material,” she said.
In addition, there is the threat of climate change.
Ube is considered one of the most resilient crops in the Philippines. It thrives in the equatorial archipelago's dry and wet seasons, says Grace Bakian, lead ube researcher at Benguet State University.
Dry soil and strong sunlight encourage rooting and leaf formation. Then the rain causes the tubers to swell, sometimes up to 30 pounds. But this meteorological order has been disrupted due to climate change.
“Now you never know when it’s going to rain or when it’s going to be sunny,” Bañares said.
The traditional “dry” months now bring downpours as stronger typhoons increasingly hit the islands. In November, at the start of the ube harvest, two typhoons hit the archipelago within a week.
If there is too much rain, the ube suffocates, rotting back into the soil. If strong winds tear off too many leaves, the plants absorb too little sunlight and dry out. When entire acres are destroyed, farmers have no quick fix. They are waiting for the next planting season to begin.
As Ube farmers need more help, the Philippine government is offering less. Congress cut the Agriculture Department's already tiny UBE budget by about 10% to 10 million pesos (about $170,000) for 2026, Natividad-Caballero said. The department plans to use the ube money specifically to produce more planting material that can be distributed to farmers.
Most of the department's money goes to rice, corn and vegetables, a response to the fact that nearly a third of children under 5 are stunted due to malnutrition, according to national health data. About a third of adults have at least one sign of malnutrition, according to a 2021 study.
There is also concern about the lack of support for foods that are important to the country's cultural heritage.
The Philippines may be watching its signature tuber slip away, says Jam Melchor, a Filipino chef who founded the advocacy group Philippine Culinary Heritage Movement. Ube is the main ingredient in halo-halo, a popular dessert made from shaved ice layered with fruit, jellies and ice cream, often served at parties.
“Can you imagine a Filipino Christmas without ube? It feels like something is missing,” Melchor said. “And it feels like something is wrong.”
In the hills of Benguet, Emilio placed the ube she had dug out of the ground on a mossy rock outside her house, then leaned over a plastic basin to wash it. The water turned brown as she rubbed the tuber with her palm.
She said she started growing ube after the pineapple season ended because it fed her during the rainy season. But Ube also kept it close to the memory of his mother and other farmers in the city. When they met, she no longer felt alone on the hill.
She gave the ube one last splash and patted him.
“I think I’ll plant it,” she said.
