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CABANATUAN CITY—Confused about what to do with their
newly harvested palay, or unmilled rice, even as Nueva
Ecija traders continue to refuse to buy them, some
farmers thought of just storing them at home and cease
from planting this coming wet-season cropping.
The
National Food Authority (NFA), however, said the traders
only slowed down the buying and aligned their buying
rate with that of the government’s, which is beneficial
to rice consumers in the end, because at the minimal
capital, the traders can convert the palay to rice
costing as much as P30 a kilogram (kg) only.
Earlier
this week, the 135 NFA-licensed rice millers in the
major rice-producing Nueva Ecija reportedly stopped
buying the farmers’ palay for fear they would be accused
of hoarding stocks.
Since
the NFA flooded the markets with the cheap
government-subsidized rice, the commercial rice stocks
had remained stagnant. In Nueva Ecija there are around
372,400 bags and about 1, 319,500 bags in the entire
Central Luzon.
If they
would buy palay now, the traders said, those will be
added to their stocks and would be mistaken as
“hoarding” the next time the NFA-National Bureau of
Investigation (NBI) men raid their warehouses again.
The NFA,
however, in trying to cushion the impact of the ongoing
rice crisis, had to “correct” terms like “inspection”
instead of raid; or that the traders in Nueva Ecija did
not stop buying palay from farmers, but instead they
only aligned their rate with the government’s.
NFA
Central Luzon manager Nicolas Crisostomo saw the
traders’ “slowdown” and pegging down their buying rate
from P17.50 to P18 a kg, which is a thin margin from the
government’s procurement price of P17 a kg, as
beneficial to rice consumers.
He
computed that with some P1,700 capital investment for a
100 kg of palay bought at P17 a kg, a trader could
generate cheap P30 a kg rice in the retail market.
He
explained that with the ideal 65-percent milling
recovery, a trader could have a bare cost of P26.15 a
kg. The 65-percent milling recovery means the supposed
100 kg of palay produced 65 kg of rice.
If the
trader will mark up the bare cost of P26.15 a kg,
subtracting the basic operational costs of handling,
cost of sacks, etc., he will have as much as P30 a kg
for the retail price of the rice.
Crisostomo added the tight rice situation will not last
long considering that the farmers are about to complete
their harvest around mid-May. “Everything will be all
right after that,” he said.
But it
is the present that worries the Nueva Ecija rice
farmers, seeing that their own sacks of palay are piling
up because no traders would want to take them.
Eduardo
Policarpio, a farm cooperative head in Cabanatuan City,
whose newly harvested palay were among those that local
traders refused to accommodate, planned to keep their
harvest in their own houses and because they have enough
supply, they would rather not plant in the coming
wet-season cropping.
Will the
same thing happen with the other farmers in Nueva Ecija
whose harvest, when accumulated, according to assistant
priovincial agriculturist Bernbardo Valdez, will reach
up to 746,700 tons based on the planted area of 131,000
hectares and average yield of 5.7 tons per ha?
Jessica
Santos, of Rice Action Network (R1), said: “It is where
the government’s role is very critical. If traders won’t
buy the palay in protest of the raids, then NFA should
step in to buy directly from the farmers. After all, NFA
has ample storage facilities. We should assure the
farmers that, not only will their palay be bought. It
should be at a level that makes farming viable. |
