THE government has formed a 30-man multisectoral task force that would address and fast-track measures to help farmers cope with declining farm-gate palay prices that have sunk to a more than seven-year low, according to a Department of Agriculture (DA) document.
The DA issued Special Order (SO 862), Series of 2019, which created a task force that would “facilitate assistance relative to the drop of palay farm-gate price.”
The task force is composed of experts and economists from academe, the private sector and government, as well as representatives of rice farmers, millers, cooperatives and various government agencies related to rice.
“The task force shall perform the following: develop, adopt and promulgate measures to promote rice productivity and farmers’ viability and ensure the effective and efficient implementation of rice-related measures in relation to the drop of palay farm-gate price,” according to the SO, which was dated August 27 but was uploaded on DA’s web site on October 8.
The task force will be chaired by Fermin D. Adriano, who is concurrently an adviser of the agriculture department.
The members of the task force from the public sector include: the Agriculture undersecretaries for Operations and Consumer Affairs, the National Food Authority (NFA) administrator, the Philippine Crop Insurance Corp. president, and the assistant secretaries for Agribusiness and Marketing and for Policy, Research and Development.
Also part of the task force are Central Bank Monetary Board member Bruce J. Tolentino, Undersecretary Mercedita A. Sombilla of the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda), and Finance Undersecretary for Strategy, Economics and Results Group Karl Kendrick T. Chua, among others.
Action for Economic Reform (AER) Executive Director Filomeno Sta. Ana and University for Asia and the Pacific (UA&P) Center for Food and Agribusiness Director Rolando T. Dy are also part of the task force.
Rice millers, traders, retailers, farmers and cooperatives will have representatives to the task force. Under the special order, the UA&P, AER, Neda and private-sector representatives (PSR) would serve as advisers of the task force.
Among the identified measures in the SO is intensifying the NFA’s palay procurement and acceleration of its stocks rollover, especially in affected/low priced areas.
The average farm-gate price of dry unhusked rice sank to a new seven-year low in the second week of September, according to latest data released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Preliminary figures released by the PSA showed that average palay prices plunged 30.08 percent to P16.18 per kilogram, from the P23.14 per kg recorded in the same period of last year.
“The average farm-gate price of palay continued to drop as it declined to P16.18 per kg or by 0.6 percent during the period relative to its previous week’s level of P16.28 per kg,” the PSA said in its weekly report published on Thursday.
During the reference period of September 11 to 17, the lowest farm-gate price was recorded in Pampanga province at P12 per kg, while the highest quotation was in Sorsogon at P20.70 per kg, PSA data showed.
With the increase in imports and the upcoming harvest starting October, the farm-gate price of palay will continue to go down, according to various farmers groups and nongovernment organizations. The latest average dry palay quotation is the lowest since the fifth week of March 2013, when dry palay farm-gate price averaged P16.15 per kg.