URDANETA CITY -- Unless the government buys from them, big rice mill owners in the province of Pangasinan warned that the food crisis in the country could worsen if they would be forced to shut down their operations because nobody would buy their produce.

The rice millers, who met here on Tuesday to assess their situation, said dealers in Metro Manila and other non-rice producing areas have stopped buying from them for fear of being raided by government agents on suspicion of hoarding.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) has created the Anti-Rice Hoarding Task Force to run after unscrupulous rice traders.

“It’s a chain reaction. Because of the raids, rice dealers no longer wanted to have large rice stocks [in their warehouses]. They now only maintain 10 to 15 percent of their usual inventories,” said businessman Rosendo So, president of the Eastern Pangasinan Filipino-Chinese of Commerce and spokesman of the rice millers.

So said this situation has resulted in the rice millers’ loss of their market. Many rice millers, as a result, have stopped buying palay (unhusked rice) from farmers, he said.

Given this situation, So said, they would have no choice but to shut down operations.

“Also, as a consequence, because of the low demand, the buying price of palay in the past few days had drastically dropped from P19 to P16.20,” So said.

Pangasinan, the third largest rice producing province in the country, produced more than 1.033 million metric tons of rice last year, which is about 57 percent more than what its 2.4-million population could consume, according to the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist in Lingayen town.