TO help the government address the rice crisis, domestic manufacturers belonging to the Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI) will provide free fertilizers and other inputs to farmers to enable them to triple their yields under the group’s “adopt a farmer” and “adopt a farming community” programs.

Jesus Arranza, FPI president, said this will be the support that the organization will give to the government in the short term, with the corporate farming to be done by the FPI member-firms and industries themselves as the long-term plan.

Arranza said small firms will adopt rice farmers, while the big corporations will look after the needs of an entire farming community.

Arranza said Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap has promised to reciprocate the FPI’s efforts by helping convince President Arroyo to make its expenses for the program deductible from the corporate income taxes.

The Department of Agriculture (DA), Arranza said, will also help in facilitating the assistance to the farmers.

The DA will identify the farmers to be supported by the FPI members in their areas of operations and assist them in terms of farm inputs (seeds, fertilizers, operating expenses), marketing, technical farm education, etc.

“We were told that with the program, the farmers will be able to increase their output from 80 sacks per hectare to about 200 sacks,” Arranza told the BusinessMirror.

The participating FPI members would then buy part of the yield from the farmers, based on the prevailing market value, and then distribute them to their respective employees either as rice subsidies or to be sold at cost.

Arranza said if this program will be reasonably replicated by other companies or business organizations nationwide, this project would immediately address the rice crisis, with the government not spending a single centavo and without the need of increasing the lands to be tilled.

It will also unburden the National Food Authority, he said, because with the participating companies regularly buying part of the produce of their adopted farmers, it would lessen the subsidy (price support) that the agency would be paying in palay buying.

Some traders who usually manipulate the price of rice that they buy from the farmers will also be eliminated, Arranza said.

He said this program will run while the FPI is preparing and educating its members on the Corporate Farming Program, which would take some time.

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