Global purple craze brightens hopes for Philippines ube farmers

"There needs to be some sort of protection for the use of ube. You can’t just slap purple sweet potato and call it ube, that should be illegal."

Global purple craze brightens hopes for Philippines ube farmers. "There needs to be some sort of protection for the use of ube. You can’t just slap purple sweet potato and call it ube, that should be illegal." MANILA, Philippines — More than 8,000 kilometers away from an ube farm in Sapang Uwak, Pampanga, New Zealand-based entrepreneur Alonzo Nieves is connecting the dots for his startup export business. He scrolls through thousands of posts and listings in a Facebook group devoted entirely to ube – planting materials, ube powder, everything ube. And then it hit him. Why is the ube supply chain so fragmented that it has become a rat race? That realization forced the 26-year-old Filipino to start Philippine Ube (philippineube.com). "If you buy ube anywhere in the world, the likelihood is that it’s produced in China, which is insane to me....