The amount of losses that rice farmers have incurred has reached P50-Billion, based on the computation of the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF).
In a phone-patch interview, FFF’s national manager Raul Montemayor said farmers have already harvested around 10 million metric tons of palay, and that its farmgate price has gone low by five pesos per kilo.
He added that their yield can still go up as harvest time is still ongoing; however, the price-drop of palay continues.
The group is blaming the entry of imported rice for their losses.
They said, as of July this year, the amount of imported rice that has entered the country has reached 2.3 million tons, and this may go up to 3 million metric tons by this month.
This is twice the deficiency in the local produce.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) has earlier said that the volume of imported rice has gone beyond the country’s needs.
The farmer group believes that one way of solving this is to increase the tariff on imported rice.
“Kung masyadong malaki na yung taripa hindi na profitable sa importer na magpasok ng bigas,” Montemayor said.
DA Secretary William Dar said the department made an effort to launch an initial investigation last September to implement the general safeguard measure that will control the entry of imported rice in the country.
They, however, suspended this last October 10, following a Cabinet decision to just release additional financial aid to farmers.
“We discussed in the Cabinet that general safeguards duty was being investigated by DA. So after a good discussion, ang decision of the cabinet, instead of that ay magbigay ng Cash assistance and the government has set aside P3B,” Dar said.
The farmer group, however, sees this as just a band-aid solution.
“Habang namimigay siya ng P5,000 lumalaki naman yung lugi ng magsasaka dahil patuloy pa rin yung pagdagsa ng imports. So parang hindi siya solusyon, panakip-butas lang siya,” Montemayor said.
The DA said that as soon as the Rice Competitiveness and Enhancement Fund with a yearly fund of P10-Billion for six years is implemented, palay production expense will go down from P12 per kilo to just P6 per kilo. (from the report of Rey Pelayo) /mbmf
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