Farmers may lose incentive from NFA
Credit to Author: EIREENE JAIREE GOMEZ| Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2019 17:23:32 +0000
Amid declining price of palay (unmilled rice), farmers may lose the perk they are getting from the Buffer Stocking Incentive (BSI) program of the National Food Authority (NFA) after Sen. Cynthia Villar called on the grain agency to bring its buying price of palay back to P17 per kilo.
Farmer cooperatives are currently able to sell palay to NFA for P20.70 per kilo while individual farmers can sell the produce for P20.40 per kilo under the BSI program, which the government started implementing amid the rice crisis in October 2018. The rates are P3.70 less without the incentive.
But Villar, chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food, wants the support price back to P17 per kilo. In a Senate hearing on the implementation of the Rice Tariffication Law, Villar said the P17 per kilo is a “reasonable” palay buying price. She said the NFA should be adopting it because the “situation has changed.”
“[The] P17 per kilo is the normal [price] because the cost of production is P12 per kilo and at P17 per kilo farmers [can] already gain profit. We just want to achieve that they are earning,” Villar said.
Agriculture Secretary William Dar agreed with Villar. “The P17 [per kilo] plus P3.70 incentive system was done during the crisis situation in 2018 so I think we will have to revisit that formally in the NFA Council so that during this period we can cover and really buy more palay at P17 per kilo,” Dar said.
Meanwhile, NFA Administrator Judy Dansal revealed the grains agency will start buying even wet palay from local farmers.
“We have agreed that we will be buying palay with 30-percent moisture content,” Dansal said in the same hearing, following NFA’s meeting with all heads of its regional offices across the country.
Originally, the agency buys locally-produced palay which meet the 14-percent moisture content requirement. “That is an improvement to our procurement policy. Besides that, we will be focusing on the top ten rice-producing provinces and distribute our trucks to [these locations] so that we can focus our procurement this forthcoming harvest season,” Dansal said.
Under Republic Act 11203 or the Rice Tariffication Law, the NFA will no longer be allowed to import rice as its role was confined to buffer-stocks management for emergencies and calamities through buying palay solely from local farmers.
From January to August this year, the NFA has bought a total of 293,200 metric tons (MT) of palay, up 7,146 percent from 4,046 MT procured in January to September 2018.