NFA hikes palay buying from farmers

Farmers are finally selling their rice to the government, thanks to the rice incentive implemented at the last minute by the Department of Agriculture (DA) and National Food Authority (NFA).

For the longest time, NFA has been struggling to buy palay from local farmers because of its low buying price, which was set at 117 per kilogram (/kg). This was used by the agency as an excuse to rely mainly on importation.

But Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol, who now serves as chairman of the NFA Council, said the country can't always rely on importation as rice exporting countries such as Vietnam and Thailand are also experiencing the pitfalls of climate change.

What he did then was to impose in October a buffer stocking incentive (BSI) worth 13/kg, which will be added to the existing 117/kg palay buying price.

As a result, the NFA was now able to procure a total of 1.01 million bags of palay from local farmers from January to November this year, 92 percent of which bought during the months of October and November.

NFA Officer-in-Charge Administrator Tomas Escarez said yesterday that the "remarkable rise" in procurement may be attributed to NFA’s additional incentive added to palay's buying price.

Without the incentive, the cumulative procurement totalled to only 85,318 bags from January to September.

But for November alone, or a month after the BSI was implemented, the NFA was able to buy a total of 630,934 bags of palay. It came from the country's top palay producing provinces namely Mindoro Occidental, Mamburao, Batangas, Mindoro Oriental, Bukidnon, Isabela, Capiz, Iloilo, North Cotabato, and Camarines Sur.

“This means that given the right price, the NFA will be able to buy more from our farmers,” Escarez said.

The P3/kg BSI is given across-theboard based on the NFA’s table of Equivalent Net Weight (ENW) parameters for moisture content and purity.

For clean and dry palay, the total buying price of NFA can now reach as much as 120.70 per kilogram because of it.

“At a time when private traders were buying at 120.28 or lower than the NFA buying price, our farmers decided to sell to us instead,” Escarez said.

In a separate computation, NFA said consumers from the marginalized sector saved as much as 16.22 billion from January to November by buying rice from the state-run grains agency alone.

"An ordinary consumer saves at least 112.00 per kilogram every time he buys NFA rice sold at 127.00 per kilogram compared to the lowest imported wellmilled rice sold at P39.00 per kilogram based on suggested retail price or SRP," the agency said.

As of now, there are 19,231 rice retail outlets nationwide that have been accredited by the NFA to sell the government subsidized rice.

Aside from this, NFA has also accredited non-traditional outlets such as Barangay Bagsakan and Barangay Food Terminals and Bigasan sa Parokya.

NFA has also partnered with the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) TienDA Malasakit and the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) Tulong sa Bayan Suking Outlets on Wheels.

“We are utilizing several platforms to make sure that NFA rice reaches our poor kababayans even in the remotest and farthest barangays and island provinces,” said Escarez. NFA is also currently deploying mobile stores through its Tagpuan Day Rice Response Delivery (TRRD).

TRDD is a rice distribution strategy where the 127.00/kg NFA rice is sold directly to poor and marginalized beneficiaries in the area at an appointed time and place in close coordination with the local barangay.

Meanwhile, Escarez said that the delivery of 297,000 MT rice shipments bought under the open tender scheme is almost complete.

With these fresh stocks, the food agency can continue to inject low-priced rice to make it accessible and available to more consumers through its network of accredited retailers.