‘Not slaves of the market’: Why a tiny Philippine convent that popularised ube jam resists expansion 

BAGUIO, Philippines – When I was growing up in Metro Manila, those glass jars of deep purple ube jam were a constant in the refrigerator, as they were in many other Filipino households.

As a child, I would sneak into the kitchen and eat the sweet treat straight from the jar, the way other children might savour ice cream.

More often than not, my mother would catch me hovering by the refrigerator. “Don’t go for seconds with the same spoon,” she would warn.

Ube is a type of purple yam native to the Philippines. With a naturally sweet, earthy flavour, ube is folded into cakes, ice cream, milkshakes and halo-halo, an iconic Filipino shaved-ice dessert.

In recent years, the once-humble root crop has attracted global attention from San Francisco to Surabaya. Supply is struggling to keep up with surging demand – so much so that the Philippines had to turn to Vietnam to supplement its ube supply in the past year.

Its flavour – often described as nutty with notes of vanilla – and vivid violet hue have made it a favourite ingredient in cafes and dessert shops abroad. Even Starbucks has introduced limited-time drinks featuring the yam in certain branches across Europe and Asia in spring 2026.

Beyond desserts and beverages, ube is increasingly used in baked goods, confectionery, natural food colouring and even cosmetics.

“Ube is becoming the new matcha,” Agriculture Undersecretary Cheryl Marie Natividad-Caballero told The Straits Times. The yam’s appealing colour and flavour are opening up opportunities across the food industry, she added. While ube has not yet reached matcha’s multibillion-dollar market size, it is following the same path of “viral” expansion into lattes, pastries and mainstream cafe menus, and is thus dubbed “the next matcha” by food industry experts and trend forecasters. 

In the Philippines, ube is primarily grown by small-scale, traditional farmers on seasonal mountainside or backyard plots.

But for generations of Filipinos, one of the purple yam’s most iconic forms has been a jam made by the nuns of the Religious of the Good Shepherd congregation at their convent perched on a hillside in Baguio, a cool mountain city about 250km north of Manila, or around four hours by road.

In the 1950s, the Good Shepherd Convent began making and offering the delectable jam, which soon became a household treat, based on a recipe created by one of the Catholic nuns. Yet, it is increasingly coming under pressure to churn out more amid the growing global fascination with ube.

The Good Shepherd Sisters now face a delicate balancing act: sustaining a social enterprise that supports indigenous students and smallholder farmers from nearby provinces while resisting the pressures of scale and bulk orders in a market that increasingly wants more than they can, or want to, produce.

Funding students’ dreams

At the heart of the operation is a programme supporting as many as 40 underprivileged indigenous young people a year from the Cordillera region in northern Luzon, the Philippines’ main island.

The Mountain Maid Training Center is the vocational-economic arm that produces the ube jam, and Mountain Maid is the official brand name printed on the labels of the convent’s jams, brittles and fruit preserves.

Since 1983, more than 1,000 young people have benefited from this student-work programme.

The students, who are enrolled at universities in and around Baguio, work eight-hour shifts on average at least three days a week, processing ube into finished products. They earn a daily minimum wage of 505 pesos (S$10.80) for that region, with the earnings going towards tuition fees, daily expenses and savings.

Inside the convent kitchen, turning the starchy tuber into jam is painstaking work. Regular staff and student workers begin early in the morning, peeling the thick purple skins by hand before the yams are boiled, mashed and slowly cooked down with condensed milk and sugar.

Machines now assist in stirring and pasteurising the mixture, but workers still rely on experience, constantly checking colour, texture and thickness to ensure the jam maintains its signature taste.

“We try to keep the sweetness somewhere in the middle so it appeals to everyone,” production supervisor Judylyn Backong said. “Some people have a sweet tooth, others don’t.”

Fresh ube deliveries arrive two or three times a month during the harvest period from October to February, sometimes reaching 4,000kg per batch. The preferred variety is the Mindoro type, prized for its sweetness and deep colour.

It takes months to grow ube, so during the off-harvest period, the farmers supplement their incomes with other vegetables and crops.

Good Shepherd buys raw ube for about 80 pesos per kilogram, paying almost double the market rate to farmer groups it partners with to keep supplies coming.

Farmers typically earn 10,000 to 20,000 pesos per harvest.

For farmer Mercy Basilio, who grows ube in neighbouring Tuba town, cultivating the crop requires patience. The yam takes seven to nine months to mature and is vulnerable to typhoons and extreme weather.

“When a strong typhoon comes and uproots our ube, we’re back to zero again,” she said.

Adverse weather, exacerbated by climate change, is one reason the country is struggling to keep up with ube demand.

Annual ube production in the Philippines has declined from more than 15,000 tonnes in 2021 to around 14,000 tonnes in 2025, according to industry data.

The Philippines has even had to import ube from Vietnam – mainly processed, in puree or powder form – to meet local demand in 2025, noted Fitch Solutions’ analytics unit BMI.

Undersecretary Caballero said the government is working to expand production by improving planting materials, propagation techniques and farmer supply chains, but some farmers say assistance has yet to reach them.

Good Shepherd staff said many farmer-partners still struggle to obtain planting materials, forcing them to rely on their own resources to replant crops destroyed by storms.

Ms Basilio agreed, saying: “We’re on our own out here.”

Changing value chain

For now, Good Shepherd’s farmer-partners remain loyal, but Sister Guadalupe Bautista, who oversees the enterprise, said rising global demand could test that commitment.

“Farmers may prefer higher prices from exporters who puree the ube for overseas markets,” she said. “That’s the challenge we may face in the coming years.”

The nearby Grand Sierra Pines hotel also sources ube and strawberries directly from farmers for dishes and pastries, including its popular ube bread and ube cake. In recent years, competition for supply has grown significantly, its general manager Jen Zafra said.

“Everybody’s eyeing the farmers now,” she said. “As long as you pay them well and on time, you’ll have your partnership. But what if someone else pays them more?”

Agriculturist Victor Dizon Jr of the University of the Philippines Los Banos said such shifts are typical when a niche crop becomes a global trend.

Higher demand raises prices throughout the supply chain, encouraging farmers to sell to the best-paying buyers.

“At the end of the day, it’s social economics,” Dr Dizon said. “Farmers just want to remain sustainable given production pressures and the Philippines’ exposure to typhoons and extreme events. So the value chain will definitely be rocked from here on out because ube is on the rise.”

Ube prices have more than doubled since 2019 because of domestic scarcity, reaching approximately US$11 (S$14) per kg. This reflects the high-end retail or end-user price, rather than what is paid directly to farmers.

Rising ube demand creates a double-edged sword for heritage brands, as they must compete with high-paying international exporters for limited raw materials. Simultaneously, these surging prices provide an opportunity to encourage farmers to expand production, potentially stabilising the supply in the long term.

Dr Dizon said independent producers such as Good Shepherd can remain competitive by focusing on what makes them distinct – strong relationships with farmers, consistent quality and a story tied to place and tradition.

Pilgrimage in a jar

A long line forms most mornings outside the convent’s modest retail shop, stretching across the covered open-air area in front of the two cash registers.

A 340g jar of Good Shepherd ube jam sells for about 350 pesos. It is not available for sale elsewhere. Resellers in Baguio city and beyond are known to offer the same jar for nearly double the price, after purchasing the jam from the convent.

“If we don’t put a two-bottle limit per customer, the resellers would hoard everything,” outreach staff member Magdalena Par-ogan said. That limit helps ensure visitors do not leave empty-handed after a long journey to Baguio.

While the Good Shepherd Convent is most famous for its ube jam, it also sells a wide variety of other traditional Baguio delicacies and baked goods. Sales proceeds fund the education and scholarship programmes for underprivileged youth in the Cordillera region.

“People say a trip to Baguio would not be complete without a trip to Good Shepherd to buy our jam. We’re happy when people tell us that,” said Mr Michael Amagod, whose job involves purchasing yams from the farmers for processing.

On average, the convent produces about 700 boxes, or roughly 16,800 jars, per month, which are sold out in no time. But the sisters will not hire more staff beyond the over 100 workers to produce more.

“We’re not machines,” Ms Par-ogan said.

Scaling up production would mean pushing staff to work longer hours and turning the tiny convent kitchen into something akin to a factory – something the nuns are reluctant to do.

Still, that has not stopped large companies seeking bulk supplies from approaching the convent. So far, all requests have been declined, Sister Bautista said.

“Somebody recently wanted to export 50 cases of ube every month (from us). I said no,” she recalled.

“Our philosophy is we sell only what we can produce,” she said, adding that the enterprise was never meant to become purely commercial. “We are not here to be slaves of the market.”

The goal is not simply income but what the enterprise calls the “fullness of life”, Ms Par-ogan said. Expanding production purely for profit could undermine that purpose, she added.

Prayer remains part of daily life in the kitchen, in the shop with like-minded customers and in the fields with farmers.

Like many of those now working at the social enterprise, Ms Par-ogan, Mr Amagod and Ms Backong are locals who benefited from the ube work programme as students. “This isn’t just a business for us. It’s our way of giving back,” Ms Par-ogan said.

This message is printed on every lid: “You help send us through college each time you buy our product – Cordillera Youth.”

After returning home from Baguio, I placed my two jars of ube jam into the refrigerator.

The old habit returned. Grabbing a spoon, I scooped out a mouthful straight from the jar, tasting the same earthy sweetness I loved as a child.

Only now do I understand what is in the jar. It is not just a blend of ingredients – purple yam, milk and sugar – but an edifying mix of faith, labour and dreams, concocted by nuns who believe that some things are best not scaled without soul.