Small rice farmers sink deeper in debt

AS FLOODWATERS spawned by Tropical Storm “Juaning” recede after destroying rice fields in Bicol two weeks ago, small farmers are facing uncertainties for the coming months, especially since the government had already scrapped its seed subsidy to them.

The subsidy used to cover half of the farmers’ expenses for rice seeds and fertilizers.

Adelina Brosula, 54, a farmer from Minalabac, Camarines Sur, wonders how her family would survive after Juaning. Typhoon “Bebeng,” which struck the region on May 8, had ruined their flowering crops in a one-hectare family-owned farm in Barangay Del Carmen del Rosario.

“We loaned at least P10,000 from a rice trader in May and then asked again for another loan in June, hoping that we could at least recoup and partly pay. But our rice farm was again destroyed by the flood last Tuesday (July 26),” Brosula said in Bikol.

Together with some 500 other families whose houses were under waist-deep water, Brosula and her family took shelter at the municipal hall.

She recalled that years ago, when typhoons devastated farms, the government was at least able to help the tillers recover when it distributed rice seeds to them.

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Edita Barcimilla, 60, related a similar story after Bebeng and Juaning washed away her farmland more than a month after planting rice seedlings. Now, she is deep in debt to a rice trader and does not know how her family could recover without any government assistance.

She said her family had no other means of livelihood but planting rice and vegetables.

According to Mayor Gil Basmayor, some 5,000 ha of rice farms in 11 villages in Minalabac are still flooded.

“It’s a very difficult situation for the local government because we cannot lend the farmers for them to replant,” Basmayor said. After the flooding subsides, he said, the bigger problem would be “were would these farmers get their food?”

Arnold Lipa, a rice trader in Barangay Irayang Sulong, said he lent the farmers P800,000 in May and P300,000 in June when the two typhoons came. He is not expecting to immediately recover his money, although he himself had borrowed part of the amount from big rice traders in Camarines Sur.

No more loan capital

Lipa said the debt cycle had continually trapped farmers. This time, he could not lend anymore because he had no more capital.

Basmayor hopes the national government will reconsider giving farmers subsidy in times of calamity if it wants to alleviate their situation and achieve rice sufficiency.

Jose Dayao, executive director of the Department of Agriculture (DA) regional office in Pili, Camarines Sur, said the government was more focused on pursuing infrastructure projects, such as farm-to-market-roads. The projects eat up P2.4 billion of the department’s total budget this year.

Dayao said his office could still help the farmers, but the distribution of rice seeds would be limited only to those whose rice farms were destroyed.

He pointed out that it had a balance of 9,000 bags of rice seeds from a previous program called the Rapid Seeds Supply Program.

Bebeng destroyed 22,963 ha of the 31,783 ha of rice farms in the region, said Elena B. De Los Santos, director for operations and extension of DA-Bicol.