A senior lawmaker on Monday proposed that the Department of Agriculture (DA)’s strategy to plant higher-yielding hybrid seeds in 1.5 million hectares of land this dry season be anchored on the revival of the Masagana 99 program.
Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte said that much higher palay yields via a revived Masagana program would significantly boost the market supply of rice, leading to the cheaper retail cost of this staple that could help President Marcos attain his goal of pulling down the price of rice to as low as P20 a kilo.
According to the lawmaker, the highly successful intensified production Masagana 99 program that enabled the government in the 1970s “to beat a nationwide supply shortage and even export the staple later during the incumbency of the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr.”
“The DA’s new strategy to significantly boost palay yields and meet President Marcos’ goal of attaining rice self-sufficiency in two years’ time should clear the way to the revival of the Masagana 99 program, which our Chief Executive’s father launched in 1973 to address a then-nationwide rice shortage,” he said.
However, with the average yield of big producers like China at about 6.5 metric tons (MT) per ha, the lawmaker said, “the target of the proposed Masagana redux is to produce at least 129 cavans a hectare instead of 99 cavans.”
“Higher palay yields will boost domestic supply of the staple, eventually pulling down its market rate to possibly as low as P20 a kilo as hoped-for by the President,” Villafuerte added.
President Marcos reiterated his goal to make rice more affordable for Filipinos by eventually slashing its per-kilo price in the market to P20, during his March 16 visit to Pili, CamSur where he launched a Kadiwa ng Pangulo center, the first such retail outlet in Bicol.
There are now over 500 Kadiwa outlets nationwide that sell cheaper basic goods, including rice at P25 a kilo, and at the same time provide direct market access to local farmers and producers.
Built on the provision of high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, cheap fertilizers and pesticides along with subsidized, collateral-free loans to let farmers acquire their production inputs to raise their output from the then-average of 40 cavans per hectare to 99 cavans, Masagana 99 enabled the country to become rice self-sufficient by 1975 and to even export the crop over the 1977-1978 period, according to Villafuerte.
Masagana 99 managed to achieve that by promoting the use of the high-yielding “miracle rice” variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) headquartered in Los Baños, Laguna.
“But given last month’s decision by President and concurrent DA Secretary Marcos to adopt higher-yielding hybrid seeds as a better option to the certified or inbred varieties now being used for palay production, the government’s goal of self-sufficiency after two years could be attained should a Masagana redux program target a production yield of at least 129 cavans each hectare, which is almost the average of the world’s largest producer China,” Villafuerte said.
Villafuerte said his province—according to the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS)—became the country’s 12th biggest rice producer in 2008 and a higher No. 8 in 2011. CamSur went up to No. 4 rice producer in 2016.
Villafuerte said that, “To ensure an even better Masagana program this time around, the DA should work on crafting a supervised credit program that would be affordable for the would-be farmer-beneficiaries and at the same time be sustainable for both the government and the new program’s creditor-institutions.”