How to encourage farmers to produce rice
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:40:00 05/16/2008
So much has been said about the rice crisis. But we are yet to read the views of true-blue rice farmers. That’s why I’m breaking my silence on the issue.
Although I’m a working journalist, I’ve been a weekend farmer since 1992—like an old friend, former editor-publisher of We Forum, “Manong” Joe Burgos. Bless his soul!
My fellow rice farmers must have been elated when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered the National Food Authority (NFA) last month to start buying “palay” [rice before husking] at P17 per kilogram. It is the first time in many years they are going to make some real money out of their harvests. Bad for me, I sold my last surplus harvest at P12 a kilo way back in February.
Rice farming may finally turn profitable. Rice should follow the way of fuel oil products, up, up and away.
To be brutally frank, or frankly brutal, we never got a fair price for our rice crops even when the buying price of hybrid rice zoomed to P1,500 a bag last year. A bag of urea fertilizer recently hit the roof at P1,600, another piece of bad news to us.
With the cost of certified seeds, labor and fertilizer increasing yearly, a farmer secretly wishes he can sell his palay at P40 to P50 a kilo. That will mean rice prices at about P100 a kilo.
The fact is that rice farming has never been profitable to farmers ever since I can remember. It is a high-risk crop, vulnerable to typhoons, droughts, golden “kuhol” [snail] and other pests. Besides, palay prices have always been fixed by government when it determined their buying prices at P8 a kilo then P10 a kilo, then P12, then P14 and now P17.
Private traders use the government buying price as a benchmark. When harvests are low, they buy it a few centavos higher than NFA’s buying price. When there is bountiful harvest, they buy at prices much lower than NFA prices, knowing fully well the NFA cannot even buy one percent of what the farmers harvest. This is how, in the past, traders made a killing. Meanwhile, rice farmers remain poor.
How did I survive? I planted vegetables instead of rice during the dry months. The few patches that got abundant irrigation water were left for rice planting. The rest were devoted to cash crops. At least, I can sell a kilo of tomato at P20 if my timing is right. A kilo of palay never reached P20.
One time, the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Donald Dee asked me why Filipino farmers could not produce enough rice to feed 90 million Filipinos when they could produce enough corn for local pigs and chicken. My answer was simple. They make money on corn, but not on rice.
Oh, rice farmers can produce enough rice for our countrymen. Just make rice farming profitable. The first step is for NFA to start buying from us at comfortable margins, not from the Vietnamese, Thai and American farmers who are getting bonanza profits at $1,000 a ton of rice.
The Philippines is yet to produce one rice magnate who is a farmer, not a rice dealer.
I am against entirely privatizing NFA. I am just for assigning more honest people there. I’d trust them better than I’d trust private rice traders.
ABE P. BELENA, Philippine Exporters Confederation
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