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NUEVA
ECIJA—Panic buying of cheap National Food Authority (NFA)
rice continues in high gear amost everywhere, and in
Metro Manila, mayors are now asking the Department of
Agriculture to put up more rolling stores and
rice-distribution centers in their jurisdictions.
As the
virtual crisis in cheap rice continues and the
government scrambles to find solutions, they appear
unable to see what is happening in the rice
farms—continued importation and low farm-gate prices
have forced a lot of small farmers to sell their farms
that have now been turned by the buyers into rice mills,
warehouses, agricultural-input stores and farm
equipment-supply stores, as well as auto-repair shops
and sundry other businesses.
These
transformed rice lands now coexist side by side,
especially along roads with steadily shrinking farming
areas.
The
small farmers are confused when they see all these
developments and then hear the government proclaim its
accomplishment reports on land reform and agricultural
production. The picture goes even hazier as these
farmers line up for their day’s share of 1 kilogram of
the subsidized rice, now a mandatory part of their daily
life.
Most of
the available 300,000 hectares of rice lands in this
province, still one of the leading sources of the
staple, are now occupied by rice traders. The areas also
continue to get smaller because aside from being made
rice-trading sites, they are converted to subdivisions,
commercial and leisure centers.
The
National Irrigation Administration (NIA) admitted that
what used to be 102,000 hectares (ha) of farms served by
the Pantabangan Dam in Central Luzon some is years ago
is now only 89,000 ha.
The
reported Nueva Ecija rice harvest of 1,356,161 tons—the
highest output in the country in 2007—was thus
attributed not to the small tillers but mostly to
wealthy rice traders.
“[The]
rice field is no longer the territory of the poor
farmers here,” said 73-year-old farm-cooperative
consultant Rodrigo Custodio, of Gen. Mariano Llanera
town. About 70 percent of the 380 ha. of rice farms
under the land consolidation program of Marcos’s
agrarian reform in Gen. Ricarte in that town had been
abandoned and sold by their previous occupants to
affluent businessmen.
Custodio
pointed to a nearby 3-ha rice-trading complex—a rice
mill, a wide palay drying pavement and a huge
warehouse—owned by a Chinese trader. “An agrarian-reform
beneficiary sold that area after failing to produce
sufficient income for his family. He is now driving a
tricycle to earn his daily food money,” Custodio said.
Of Nueva
Ecija’s population of 1,659,883, around 24,465—part of
the 68,836 families that previously owned farm lands—had
ended up as overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), records of
the National Statistics Office show.
Those
who stuck with rice farming, like Eduardo Policarpio, of
Palagay, Cabanatuan City, has had to compete hard with
big producer-traders. Policarpio, who tills the family’s
3-ha farm, gets an average net income of P45,000 each
harvest season. “It could still be higher if only the
government could adjust to the increasing cost of
inputs,” he said.
The
newly announced NFA buying price of unmilled rice of P17
a kilogram will not give farmers the
return-of-investment goal, Policarpio said.
With an
average production investment of some P25,000 a hectare
and a target average net income of P45,000, only a few
farmers could stay long in the rice industry, Policarpio
said. To get even with big traders, he formed a farm
cooperative, the Partnership in Agriculture and Rural
Transformation, that collectively trades their rice
harvests with a huge rice-warehousing complex in Bocaue,
Bulacan. Part of their earnings has to go to credit
payments and other government dues, however.
Policarpio said rice farming could still be profitable
if the government extends the needed supports.
“It
should be made more profitable as millions of Filipino
families depend on it for food. Production, storage and
processing, value-adding and marketing and distribution
should be improved,” said Schubert Ciencia, manager of
the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement.
“If they
want to return to farming, they should [undergo] some
retraining and get acquainted with the global rice
economic trends,” said farm-cooperative consultant
Custodio.
The
situation in the metropolis is not far behind. Caloocan
City Mayor Enrico Echiverri on Sunday called the
attention of Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap and the
NFA regarding a shortage of not only NFA rice, but of
the number of rolling stores and NFA rice-distribution
centers in the city. Worse, the very few NFA
rice-distribution centers in Caloocan seemed to have
been selling government-subsidized rice to those who can
afford to buy commercial rice, and not to those who
needed them more.
Echiverri and other officials of the Metro Manila
Mayor’s League are set to meet with officials of the DA,
NFA, Department of Social Welfare and Development and
the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines to
identify where the NFA rice is most needed.
Metro
residents have been forming lines for the
state-subsidized rice, which costs P18.25 per kilo or
half the cost of other commercial rice varieties.
Aside
from rice, the price of bread and other meat products
have been inching upward the past few weeks.
“We will
coordinate with the agriculture department and take the
necessary precautions in order to improve the
distribution of NFA rice and ensure that poor residents
will be given top priority in acquiring them,” Echiverri
said.
The
National Food Authority earlier gave assurances that it
will continue supplying the public especially in Metro
Manila, in order to lessen what it termed as “unfounded”
fears of a shortage in rice supply. |
