Officials of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) said it is possible to bring down the price of rice to around P20 per kilo as promised by President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
They see the realization of the campaign promise through the implementation of the agency’s “mega farms” project, an initiative conceived by DAR Secretary Bernie Cruz.
Cruz, the proponent of the project, said the plan is to consolidate small farm lots into clusters of farms or mega farms dedicated to rice production.
“The mega farm is a cluster of contiguous farms that are consolidated to form a sizable plantation capable of producing a large volume of farm products to meet the demands of consumers,” Cruz said.
“From the studies, we conducted in the mega farms project, we found out that not only is the P20-a-kilo rice achievable, but it will also be profitable for our agrarian reform beneficiaries [ARB],” Cruz said.
Cruz said that the DAR has come up with a program called “Programang Benteng Bigas sa Mamamayan” (PBBM) under the mega farm project.
DAR Undersecretary David Erro, who is a co-proponent of mega farms, said the PBBM would initially start with 150,000 hectares rice land under the coverage of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and adjacent small farm lots.
According to studies made by the DAR, a 150,000-hectare riceland can produce an average of 142 cavans of rice per hectare per cropping season. This translates to a gain of P76,501.00 annually for ARBs.
“We Filipinos have a daily average per capita consumption of rice at 301 grams or 109.9 kilograms per year. With that figure, this project can feed around 9 million poor Filipinos in our country,” Erro said.
“If our PBBM project under the project pushes through, it will not only lower the price of rice to P20, but it will also liberate the farmer-beneficiaries of CARP from subsistence farming,” Erro said.
Image credits: Bloomberg