Agriculture chief to LGUs: Buy local farmers’ palay

FARM WORK A farmer spreads fertilizer granules as he walks through his rice field in Bambang town, Nueva Vizcaya province. Rice farmers in the country, many of them still relying on manual labor to produce the staple, worry about competition from cheaper imported rice flooding local markets. —KARLSTON LAPNITEN

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan, Philippines — Agriculture Secretary William Dar is banking on the rice procurement program involving local government units (LGUs) to help farmers recover from income losses due to dropping farmgate prices and rice importation.

Dar said he had been encouraging officials in the top 20 rice producing provinces to buy palay (unhusked rice) directly from local farmers at P17 per kilogram.

“I’ve asked these [LGUs] to allocate P200 million each for palay procurement. We should prioritize the marginal farmers,” Dar said during a dialogue with farmers here on Saturday.

The P7-billion budget of the National Food Authority (NFA) is not sufficient to buy all the produce of about 1.1 million small farmers, he said, adding that the agency can buy only 450,000 metric tons of palay with its budget. The expected harvest this year is 6 million MT.

‘Free market forces’

Farmers here and in Nueva Ecija, Isabela and Ilocos Norte provinces said the average farmgate price of palay had dropped to as low as P7 per kg.

Several farmers’ groups blamed the rice import liberalization law (Republic Act No. 11203) for the declining palay prices.

But Dar said “free market forces” had been causing the downtrend in farmgate rice price. “The [rice tariffication] law is new. Critics have been blaming the law for the low buying price of palay but that’s not the case,” Dar said.

Citing government records, he said the law even helped reduce the inflation rate from 6 percent to 2.5 percent due to low prices of commercial rice.

According to Dar, many rice traders and millers have stopped buying grains since they have enough stock of imported rice in their warehouses.

Easing burden

To help ease the farmers’ burden, Dar said he already directed the NFA to buy palay from small farmers or those who tilled a rice field of not more than a hectare.

He assured farmers that P10 billion had been allocated by the Department of Agriculture under the rice competitiveness enhancement program.

The agency has also expanded its survival and recovery program to help farmers in calamity-stricken areas regain their capacity to earn a living, he said,

Under the program, small farmers can avail themselves of a P15,000-loan payable in eight years at zero interest.