SENATE President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto on Monday pressed the Department of Agriculture (DA) to take a closer look into reports on “low buying price of palay” as affected farmers griped on social media that a newly harvested kilo is bought at P12—a price that, the lawmaker lamented, was “lower than the price of a face mask.”
Recto recalled that as of the first week of September, the Duterte government’s official reports pegged at P17.64 the average farm-gate price of a kilo of palay, suggesting to concerned officials that “this should be verified, because this may not be what is happening on the ground.”
The least the Department of Agriculture can do, he added, is to “spot areas where palay is being bought at bargain prices and recommend measures on how to shore it up so that farmers will not be at the losing end.”
Recto noted, in a statement, that at that price point, rice farmers will not be able to recoup their production cost.
He computed that at P20.40 a kilo, a farmer will net P33,355 average per hectare, based on a 2018 season cost-returns study on rice production by the government. “But at P12 a kilo, wala siyang kita [he has no income], as in zero,” Recto added.
Some rice production inputs may have increased this year on account of lockdowns, which have made transportation harder and more expensive.
Noting that rice accounts for 18 percent of value produced by Philippine agriculture, the senator observed that in terms of area, around 4.65 million hectares planted to the country’s food staple account for the biggest share in cultivated land.
Palay income is an economic driver in many rural economies, which have been absorbing the recent urban unemployed, he said, even as Recto pressed for a DA to study to what extent imports are depressing farm prices, “and call for the pulling of the brakes if needed.”
Recto added: “Akala ko ba, our suki rice exporting countries have adopted a policy of rice nationalism wherein they are limiting, if not banning, the export of rice as a buffer during the pandemic?”
The senator suggested that if this is the case, then share of imports, about 13 percent of national consumption, should be filled in by local production, “but it will be impossible to ramp up production if low prices are a disincentive,” Recto said.
Image credits: Bernard Testa