THE excessive rise in rice prices last year was stopped by the Rice Tariffication Law which allowed unlimited importation of cheap rice from Vietnam and Thailand, but it was at the expense of Filipino rice farmers whose own harvests, produced at much higher costs, no longer had any buyers.
Last month, the National Food Authority (NFA) disclosed at a Senate hearing that the government had imported 1.2 metric tons of rice this year, with 290,000 metric tons – about 4 million bags – still stored in its warehouses. This prompted Sen. Francis Pangilinan to urge local governments units and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to buy the stored rice and distribute it to poor families.
“Our rice farmers are suffering due to low prices of their harvest and consumers are suffering due to high prices of their food. Unloading the current NFA stocks will allow the government to replenish our buffer stocks with fresh stocks from farmers,” he said. “Our government should be in emergency mode.”
The present price situation may not yet amount to an emergency for consumers as what happened last year, but Senator Pangilinan’s call on the NFA to start replenishing its stocks by buying from the nation’s farmers is well-taken.
This weekend, new Secretary of Agriculture William Dar disclosed that he has been meeting with various officials on plans to enable the government to start buying from the country’s rice farmers. He said he has asked the governors of some of the country’s top rice producing provinces – Isabela, Nueva Ecija, Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, Pangasinan, and La Union – to use part of their Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) funds to buy their rice farmers’ production.
The DSWD, he also said, could replace part of its monthly cash aid to Pantawid families with rice from the NFA. Cooperatives, he added, could borrow from the Land Bank to help finance their farmer members’ operations. The secretary said this buying program should start this month as the rice harvests start around September every year.
The Philippine rice industry has received considerable assistance from the government, with its scientists developing high-yielding and disease-resistant rice varieties, free irrigation for many areas, and field assistance from extension workers. There are now efforts for greater mechanization of farms.
Secretary Dar has now focused on funding, with his proposals to the governors of rice producing provinces to use part of their IRA to purchase some of the harvests of their own rice farmers, to the DSWD to replace some of its cash aid to poor families with rice rations, and to farmers’ cooperatives to make us of Land Bank loans to assist their members.
We welcome all these many efforts to help our rice farmers, to the end that we shall one day be self-sufficient in this basic food of all Filipinos.
