NFA Urged to Buy More Palay at Farmgate Price

Farmers decry the sharp decrease in the buying price of palay citing losses in their farming livelihood as the cost of production has gone up particularly this planting season due to increase in fertilizer prices and other cost of production inputs.

Jaime Tadeo of the National Rice Farmers Council joins the call of Rice Watch and Action Network (R1) on the National Food Authority (NFA) to strongly intervene and buy more palay from the farmers at P17 per kilo.

Tadeo issues this call following reports of dipping palay prices of up to P9-P12 per kilo while the average palay price last harvest season in May this year, reached P16 per kilo. The peak of the harvest season starts in October.

“The situation now calls for NFA’s intervention in palay procurement and forget about rice importation for the farmers’ sake. We badly need to see the government’s presence in palay procurement as the traders threaten to pull the prices of palay downwards to level even lower than the price level of P12 per kilo before the rice crisis,” said Tadeo.

Tadeo said the cost of production reached P10 per kilo this planting season due to increase in fertilizer prices and other cost of production inputs, a sharp increase from an average cost of P7.40 per kilo only last year.

According to the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics, the average price of urea during the planting season in June this year was P1,754.31 per sack. It increased by 78.49 percent from P982.84 only per sack in June last year.

“The reported farmers’ gains due to sudden rise in palay prices last harvest season only helped them cope with the increase in the cost of production this planting season. The NFA intervened only through rice importation, flooding the market with imported rice but failed to intervene in palay procurement,” said Tadeo.

Tadeo said the Philippine government should emulate Japan that is protecting their own farmers against imported rice. He said Japan that is known as an industrial country consciously protects their local farmers by ensuring that human consumption of rice comes from domestic supply while the minimum access volume allotment of 700,000 metric tons are dedicated to animal consumption only.

“This policy of Japan has helped their local farmers compete with imported rice, unlike our own government that would rather protect their commission from rice importation and patronize the rice traders of Vietnam and Thailand,” said Tadeo.

Jessica Reyes-Cantos, R1 lead convenor earlier also warns the agency of a repeat of the crisis if they will not help the farmers recover from the very high cost of production due to the increase in fertilizer prices and other farm inputs.

“We would like to see the government rescuing the farmers this time, after flooding the consumers with low-priced rice and slowly driving the market prices of rice down,” said Cantos. (END)