TOBACCO farmers are asking the Department of Agriculture (DA) to consider a floor price of P95 per kilogram from the prevailing P85 per kilo for flue-cured tobacco leaves.

The Solidarity of Peasants Against Exploitation (STOP Exploitation) said this is the price they will recommend should they be allowed to take part in a tripartite conference the National Tobacco Administration (NTA) would soon organize.

The group wrote a letter to the DA addressed to Agriculture Undersecretary Bernie Fondevilla. The letter asked the DA to allow them to participate in the conference.

“Our organization...was able to get information that the tripartite conference to be organized by the NTA to set the floor price of tobacco will be set later this year. Since majority of our members are small tobacco farmers, we have an interest and stake in the determination of prices of said product,” said STOP Exploitation Chairman Avelino Dacanay in the letter.

STOP Exploitation, he said, consists of 10,000 members from the provinces of Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, La Union and Abra.

At the sidelines of a press conference in Quezon City yesterday, Dacanay said the NTA has been organizing the conference each year and one of the items in its agenda is the floor price of flue-cured tobacco leaves.

“We will propose a price of P95 per kilo. That is enough for small tobacco farmers to recover costs and earn a little,” he said in the vernacular.

Dacanay noted that tobacco farmers incur costs of P77,000 for every hectare planted to tobacco.

NTA Administrator Carlitos Encarnacion, however, said that STOP Exploitation was never allowed to join the yearly conference which will be held in September.

“There are only three [participants], the tobacco farmers registered with us, the private sector, and the NTA. It has been that way since the 1960s. We cannot break the tradition,” said Encarnacion in a telephone interview.

He said STOP Exploitation can join the conference as an “observer.”

Meanwhile, Dacanay asked the national government to provide them with the necessary farm support that will allow them to shift from tobacco farming to other efficient and more profitable endeavor in agriculture.

STOP Exploitation said they would have long shifted to other forms of farming had the government given them the appropriate support like irrigation system, or simple water pound and shallow tube wells that will allow them to plant rice, corn, or other crops even during the dry season.

“Almost all the areas in the Ilocos region are rainfed, which means that we could plant rice for only one season—that is when the rains come in abundance. But if we will be given the irrigation facilities, we will be planting rice all throughout the year. It is less expensive, more profitable, and will not subject the tobacco farmers to intensive labor as the tobacco farming has led us to,” said Dacanay.

STOP Exploitation pointed to the Tobacco Regulation Act of 2003 or Republic Act 9211 which the groups said mandates the government through the DA to implement programs that will help tobacco farmers shift to other crops and find other forms of livelihood to protect them against possible displacement due to the control in tobacco consumption.

Tobacco is a major cash crop in the Philippines, although its production has been declining in recent years, according to figures released by the DA’s attached agency, the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics.

In 2006, production reached 38,360 metric tons (MT). This dropped by 10.61 percent to 34,290 MT in 2007. Last year, tobacco production went down by 5.34 percent to 32,460 MT.