San Fernando, Pampanga—Nueva Ecija has started buying palay from farmers using local funds amounting to P200 million to cushion the impact of the Rice Tariffication Law in the region, the Department of Agriculture in Central Luzon reported.
Benjamin Baltazar, DA-CL operations officer, said Nueva Ecija is the first province to help 2,000 rice farmers using its own funds.
The current prices of palay vary per region. from P13 to P15 per kilo, which is the farmers’ main complaint to the government for financial assistance for the next planting season.
Baltazar said the financial assistance includes buying palay at an additional P2 per kilo.
The funds were provided by Gov. Aurelio Umali under provincial Executive Order 05-2019, which also created the Provincial Food Council to assure food security in the province, known as the rice granary of the country.
Based on February 2019 data of the regional office of the Philippines Statistics Authority in Central Luzon, the region contributing one-fifth to the country’s total palay production in the first semester of 2018.
For the same period, Central Luzon’s volume of palay production was estimated at 1.8 million metric tonnes or about 20.8 percent of the country’s total production.
Nueva Ecija alone contributes about 52.2 percent of the region’s production, followed by Tarlac and Pampanga with 14.7 percent and 13.7 percent, respectively, Baltazar said.
Pampanga, meanwhile, has promised to give farmers drying equipments to prevent the use of national and provincial roads as drying areas, he said.
After purchase, Pampanga’s government will dry and mill palay and offer to sell to the general public, specially bulk and institutional buyers, for P30 per kilo, Baltazar said.
Another form of financial assistance to the farmers is the P5,000 cash from Rice Farmer Financial Assistance from the national government, he added.
As of Dec. 23 last year, about 500 farmers covering three hectares from the province already received the cash assistance, and more will be received after completing the required documents, Baltazar said.
The DA is also expecting P3 billion under the 2020 national budget, awaiting signature by President Rodrigo Duterte.