MIDSAYAP, NORTH COTABATO —The P18-million support which the Department of Agriculture provide to the rice farmers of North Cotabato has become burden than a solution to their problem.
The government support facility has remained a structure of desperation rather than inspiration as farmers incur losses each harvest season due to absence of government marketing support.
This, as the farmers felt shortchanged by the National Food Authority (NHA), the government’s very own agency to handle the rice procurement program, who refused to buy their palay and instead prefer the rice from private traders.
Farmers cannot compete in the market because most of the traders are selling imported rice at a very low cost while the NFA refuses to accommodate their produce.
The farmers are selling their rice at P1,300 per sack just to dispose their stock but still, their effort has never been enough.
Dante Cudal, president of Midsayap-Pigcawayan-Libungan-Kabuntalan Federation of Irrigators Association or MPLK, which has 27 member-organization in an interview with Newsline.ph said they observed that the NFA prefer to buy the traders rice and is making excuses not to buy their produce.
In 2014, Cudal’s group was provided the P16-million worth of Rice Processing Center (RPC) as support facility and P2-million fund to buy the palay of their members and generate income out of it, through the DA’s program aimed at empowering the farmers.
But the program has never helped them. Hence, it became a problem because the palay which they bought from farmer-members remained stored in their warehouse because the NFA told them their inventory is full and prices in the market is pegged at P10 at most.
The National Food Authority is vested with the function of ensuring the food security of the country and the stability of supply and price of the staple grain-rice. It performs such functions through various activities and strategies, which include procurement of paddy from individual bonafide farmers and their organizations, buffer stocking, processing activities, dispersal of paddy and milled rice to strategic locations and distribution of the staple grain to various marketing outlets at appropriate times of the year.
On the irony, the rice farmers and other farmers’ groups never felt the intervention and support of said agency because the country for ages, have been very dependent on importing rice and the government is selling the same to the market at the expense of the farmers, whose produce have become the second fiddle among traders and even at the NFA.
Instead of excitement, because it is now harvest season, Cudal said, there is anxiety because no one wants to buy their rice, and they cannot sell it in the local market because the traders prefer imported rice which is cheaper.
“Naa lang ang among humay sa warehouse, mas daku ang pirdisyon unya mas malugi mi if among ibaligya sa mobo nga presyo (our rice are stored at the warehouse, it will be more damaging and economically disadvantageous for us to sell it to traders they will get it at a very low price).
The Rice Tarrification Law (RTL), according to Cudal has weaponized the private traders at the expense of the Filipino farmers.
Not only that, the NFA has always the reason to decline their delivery citing high inventory and filled warehouse.
As of this writing, there are more than 2,000 cavans of rice at the RPC and in the storage of the farmer-members. Cudal’s group has asked North Cotabato Governor Nancy Catamco to intervene and support the rice farmers by calling on government agencies to help the farmers facilitate the sale of their palay.
Catamco for her part vowed to intervene and support the farmers as she offered another P1-million capital for every RPC, provide RPC and solar driers to every organization,
Unlike in Davao del Norte, the rice farmers do not have RPC and capital, but the provincial government supported the rice farmers from drying to milling up to the selling of their product to the NFA at a higher price.
The provincial government also buy a huge portion of the farmers palay for their relief operations.
Catamco however vowed to craft a policy that will be beneficial to the farmers of her province, “It must a be a sustainable approach to be able to help and empower the farmers.”.-Esther Roque/Newsline.ph
