Alcala studying higher palay price

The Agriculture Department will take appropriate measures and convene the National Food Authority council to address the demand of peasant groups to increase the food agency’s buying price of palay from P17 to P20 a kilo.

Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala invited the leaders of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, Amihan, and Anakpawis Partylist to attend the next board meeting of the NFA council before the end of February to discuss the increase in NFA’s palay procurement.

The peasant groups claimed that “during harvest, merchants, rice traders, and their agents only buy palay at a measly P10 to P12 a kilo, and far cheaper during harvest in the rainy season.”

The groups said this was because the NFA was not directly buying palay at the farmgate, and that “farmers were having a hard time selling palay to the grain agency due to bureaucracy and stringent requirements.”

Alcala said the situation needs immediate action by the NFA council before the end of the month.

The NFA is mandated to buy palay at the optimum rate of P17.00 to P17.70 per kilo, depending on palay quality and moisture content, which influences the buying price of traders. Some traders, however, were reportedly buying rice from farmers at only P10 to P12 a kilo of palay.

Alcala asked the farmer-leaders to identify the particular communities or towns that were not being served by the NFA buying stations. He said that to serve more farmers, the state-owned food agency will deploy more mobile palay buying stations, and establish additional drying facilities using a P120-million fund.

Agriculture assistant secretary and concurrent rice program coordinator Dante Delima also said the government plans to increase the volume of palay procurement in succeeding years.

Delima, meanwhile, said the government could not give subsidies for pesticides and fertilizers at this time, but instead encouraged farmers to use indigenous and organic farm inputs to reduce their dependence on imported chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

He also asked the farmer-leaders to participate in the Sikap-Saka program, a credit program for individual farmers in partnership with the Land Bank of the Philippines. It is being piloted in four major rice-producing areas of Isabela, Nueva Ecija, Iloilo and North Cotabato.

The credit facility may be expanded to include more provinces, where farmers can apply for production loans for farm inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers, Delima said. –Othel V. Campos, Manila Standard Today