The Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) asked President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. to ask the Land Bank of the Philippines’ to release about P1 billion intended to augment the incomes of rice farmers nationwide under the Rice Farmers Financial Assistance (RFFA) program being administered by the Department of Agriculture (DA).
FFF chair Leonardo Q. Montemayor said that the backlog in loan releases for 2021 alone, affected 181,000 farmers from Regions I, II, III, IV-B, VI, and VIII.
“Land Bank’s inaction is deplorable because it has possessed the requisite funds of about P1 billion for about a year already, and farmers could have used the cash subsidy to help offset high fertilizer and fuel prices for rice production,” he said.
The RFFA program extends a P5,000 cash subsidy to rice farmers tilling not more than two hectares to partly compensate for depressed palay prices arising from liberalized importation under the Rice Tariffication Law in 2019.
Montemayor cited the case of several hundred FFF members in Camiling, Tarlac who received subsidy claim stubs last December 17, 2021, through the Tarlac provincial agriculture office, and are still waiting for their Land Bank identification cards.
“We have learned further that, in the entire province of Tarlac, this problem is being faced by more than 15,000 farmers, 3,384 are found in Camiling municipality. Our farmers are also at a loss as to when they will get their income support for 2022,” Montemayor said.
Farmers from Pangasinan, Isabela, Cagayan, Mindoro, Iloilo, Guimaras, Leyte and other provinces suffer similar predicament.
In contrast, the RFFA program funds that were allocated to the Development Bank of the Philippines and coursed through local branches of M. Lhuillier or Universal Storefront Services Corporation (USSC) money transfer companies have generally been smoothly disbursed to beneficiary farmers, the group noted.
The group had already written LANDBANK president Cecilia C. Borromeo, urging her to act expeditiously on the matter.