If you live in an area that produces a crop, take a look in your local supermarkets, and you might be surprised to learn where the food that is available to you has come from. I noticed this first when I was living in Southern California. Although a large producer of citrus fruit, most of the citrus available in our supermarkets came from Florida or Texas, if not from some other country altogether. Oh, you could find local fruit but the majority of it was imported from elsewhere. Then I moved to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, which produces much of the fruit that I found in the stores in Southern California, and I found that the citrus in Valley stores came mostly from Florida and California. I am now living in Maine, a state that produces a great deal of potatoes, particularly in Aroostook County, only a few miles from here. Yet, unless I stop at a farm stand, which I do often, the potatoes that are available in our supermarkets are almost entirely from Idaho and Canada, primarily Prince Edward Island. The same is true of seafood. Although we are a coastal state, most of our seafood comes from elsewhere, and much of it comes from Asia.
That is interesting. I know some of our local stores will showcase the local growers some items. Maryland is the Crab state all though the harvest has been lower than normal there is still a lot of local Crabs being sold. I use to go the the Fisherman Wharf in DC to get fresh fish but I have not done that in many years and really don't know if they still sell fresh fish from the Wharf, I don't think I would eat it. I do see people fishing from the Potomac, it could just to have an activity to do.
Our country is composed of 3 major islands called Luzon in the north, Visayas in the middle and Mindanao in the south. An airplane ride from Luzon to Visayas takes about 45 minutes and another 45 minutes to Mindanao. You can imagine the food products that travel from Mindanao to Metro Manila which is in Luzon. It takes days on a sea vessel. That's why fresh fish is transported by plane. Sometime before the year 2010, there was this government's program called RO-RO which means Roll Off, Roll On that is a system of transporting goods. The transport groups - buses, ferries, planes - give priority to food stuffs coming from the rural areas. That changed the landscape of the market here in Metro Manila. The usual 350 pesos per kilo of mangosteen (a fruit) now costs 100 pesos. Such a big difference because of that transport system.