USDA team to visit RP in May

Officials of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), led by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, will head an agribusiness trade and investment mission to the Philippines on May 11 to 14.

In a statement, the USDA said the trade mission is a way of further promoting two-way cooperation, trade and investment between the United States and companies in the Philippines.

 Vilsack will also meet with high-level government officials from the Philippines and visit US agricultural development assistance projects in the country.

 “The trade mission will give local companies a chance to partner with US companies,” said Emiko Purdy, Agricultural Counselor of the USDA here in the Philippines.

 The USDA said that US agribusinesses would be meeting with nearly 70 Philippine companies during the mission’s visit next month.

 The trade mission’s goal is to promote trade and investment, particularly in fisheries, biofuels, processed goods, beverages, livestock genetics, meat and poultry, dairy products, agricultural machineries and equipment and fertilizer sectors.

 USDA figures show that two-way trade in agricultural products between the Philippines and the United States reached almost $3 billion in 2008, or 44 percent more from $2 billion in 2007.

 The Philippines imported $1.77 billion worth of farm products from the US in 2008. The USDA noted that the value of imports is 53 percent higher than what the Philippines imported in 2007.

The Foreign Agricultural Service under the USDA noted that the top US exports to the Philippines in 2008 were wheat ($702.9 million), soybean meal ($243.9 million), and dairy products ($210.22 million).

By Business Mirror

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Former Model Now Organic Farmer

From being a celebrity as a famous fashion icon, Fe Ping Federis has embraced a new passion . . . organic farming.

For her, the glitz and glamour of ramp and commercial modeling, her pictures gracing cover pages of local and international magazines and the thousands flashes of her face on television sets as product endorser are but part of the past.

She is no longer the svelte and stunning beauty looked up by many women and revered by men in the 1970s and ’80s, as she has gone back to her roots in this prime Bicol city living a quiet life cultivating a vast farm, advocating healthy diet and promoting healthful living through organic farming.

After turning her back on her modeling career in the late 1980s following her failure to join the group of then top fashion designer Aureo Alonzo in a government-sponsored tourism blitz in Europe to promote Philippine fashion, Federis went home here and tried to pursue a course in business administration.

However, a bout with pulmonary embolism, a debilitating lung illness, prevented her from finishing the course.

While at home most of the time under medication, she came to realize the importance of healthy living and on her recuperation in 2004, she took over the administration of a 40-hectare family estate in the nearby Magarao, Camarines Sur and went into organic vegetable farming.

Most of the estate is used for rice production but Federis initially set aside a 1,000-sq.m. area where she started growing vegetables like tomato, hot pepper, eggplants, cabbage, snap beans, spring onion, squash and sweet potato.

“I wanted to produce healthful foods and advocate a healthy diet not only for myself but for the others so they are spared from the ordeal of battling illnesses as what had happened to me,” Federis told the BusinessMirror over the weekend.

Her venture into organic vegetable production, she said, started when she began to realize the hazards of vegetables treated with too much chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

At first, she said her intention was to produce vegetables only for family consumption and for use in the restaurant and catering business she had established. But having associated herself with vegetarians and fitness and wellness buffs, she decided to expand her production as her friends and associated began getting orders from her.

Today, Federis has taken farming to heart. She has been attending related seminars and trainings and as an organic farming advocate, she makes use of farm wastes to fertilize the vegetable crops and adopted mulching using rice hull to cover the plant roots, especially during the hot season.

She has been actively attending meetings of the local vegetable board organized by the Department of Agriculture (DA) where she is the public information officer. At the same time, she sits as one of the board of directors of the Camarines Sur Agribusiness Chamber of Commerce.

Perhaps only few people would recognize her now as he has gained weight from her once slim figure, but the poise and grace are still there. And even if she is only in denim pants and simple polo tops sans make-up on her still beautiful face, the dignified and regal manner she carries herself is still unmistakably trademark of a ramp model.

She said she is more at peace with herself now being back to her roots focused and committed on preparing for the future of her two kids who deserve the best—a secure future, a clean and safe environment and a healthy lifestyle.

In the process she is also touching lives of people within her sphere with her wellness and healthy living through organic farming advocacy.

By Business Mirror

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Farmland Irrigation Rehabilitation

NIA completes irrigation works for 87,000 has in ’08, says DA

The Department of Agriculture (DA) disclosed that the National Irrigation Administration (NIA)—its attached agency—rehabilitated irrigation facilities in 87,305 hectares of farmlands last year.

In a statement, Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the scope of rehabilitation represents 95 percent of the agency’s target for 2008. The figure is also 45 percent of the 202,501 targeted for rehabilitation from 2008 to 2010.

Earlier, a DA official said it costs around P60,000 to repair and rehabilitate irrigation facilities for each hectare of farmland. At this rate, the government is estimated to have spent more than P5 billion last year for the task.

Apart from the repair and rehabilitation of irrigation facilities, Yap said that the government will continue to work on its existing irrigation projects.

These include the Agno River Integrated Irrigation Project and Malmar II, Kabulnan II, and Balintingon. Yap said studies on the feasibility of these projects are underway.

Earlier, the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (GMA) program said in a statement the government is aims to repair and rehabilitate the irrigation facilities for 100,000 hectares of farmlands this year.

Dr. Frisco Malabanan, director of the DA’s GMA Rice Program, said the repair and rehabilitation projects this year would need around P6 billion.

The DA also reported that the Bureau of Soils and Water Management also generated 575 hectares of small-scale irrigation projects last year. At the same time, the government completed 1,200 kilometers (km) of farm-to-market roads.

This year, Yap said around 1,000 km of farm-to-market roads would be completed by the end of June.

The government’s focus on irrigation facilities and farm infrastructure is a component of the FIELDS program of the Arroyo administration that seeks to make the country “self-sufficient” in food.

President Arroyo announced the program during the “Food Summit” held last year, prompted by volatile price of rice became in the international market.

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RP Corn Production Up

Efforts to raise corn output are paying off.

The total corn production of the country has increased by an average of 5.8 percent in the last seven years, an indication that efforts by the government and various industry stakeholders are paying off, according to Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap.

In a statement sent to the Sixth National Corn Congress held at the Albay Astrodome here from April 16 to April 18, Yap said that last year’s national corn production reached 6.93 million tons (MT) which surpassed the 2007, harvest by more than 200,000 tons despite high-fertilizer prices and the damage wrought by typhoons on corn plantations.

“For 2009, we are looking at anywhere between 7.2 MT to 7.4 MT—which is admittedly lower than our original target, because we are taking into account a host of factors including the expected decline in corn yields due to the adverse effect of changing weather patterns,” Yap said.

The livestock and poultry sector is plagued by high cost and unstable supply of feeds for chicken and swine, as well as the prevalence of diseases and high-marketing costs due to inadequate storage, transport and marketing facilities, Yap said.

At the core of the Department of Agriculture’s (DA's) corn sufficiency and security agenda is a stronger focus on the establishment of postharvest facilities, such as corn-cob dryers, shellers and farm mechanization support in the form of four-by-four tractors and shallow-tube wells.

“For these endeavors, we have earmarked P400 million or half of the National Corn Programs’ proposed 2009 financial programming of P817.7 million,” he said.

This allocation reflects a policy shift in favor of investing in infrastructure development and away from soft interventions in the form of subsidies for corn seeds and microbial inoculants, Yap said.

“Hence, we have tasked ourselves to realize the targets of raising the national harvest to 7.4 MT this year and further to 7.69 MT in 2010, and therefore improve sufficiency level from 94- percent en route to total sufficiency by 2010,” he said.

To attain those targets, Yap said farmers should realize an average yield of six tons per hectare in program areas, lower postharvest losses to 8 percent and boost farm income to at least P10,000 per hectare by 2010.

To achieve those goals, the DA will promote the use of organic and microbial fertilizers, expand farmlands devoted to corn by opening up new corn areas nationwide, and step up the nationwide inter-cropping program in coconut plantations, he said.

“We will also continue to encourage the use of hybrid corn technology among farmers across the country, reduce postharvest losses by promoting better harvest practices, continue to increase the production and consumption of white corn particularly among the traditional corn-eating population to ease the pressure on our rice requirements,” Yap said.

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DA Plans To Bring In Agri Investors

DA to craft ‘master plan’ to lure investors to agri.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) is in the process of creating a “master plan” that will outline strategic measures for making the local farm sector more conducive for private investments.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said he has designated Agriculture Undersecretary Segfredo Serrano to oversee the crafting of the master plan.

“The only way for the [farm] sector to reach its full potentials as a primary engine of growth is for the DA to be able to attract much heftier investments from the private sector,” said Yap in a statement.

The DA chief said the master plan will include the streamlining of the DA’s policies and programs to generate private sector interest in the farm and fisheries sector by familiarizing them with the comprehensive array of assistance that the government is ready to provide in production, postharvest and marketing aspects of agribusiness.

Agriculture officials have been holding strategy meetings on the master plan with members of the Secretary’s Technical Advisory Group (Stag) and with agribusiness leaders.

Among the proposals broached during a recent Stag meeting were the reactivation of the commodity boards to make them institutional arms of the DA; the identification of “commodity champions” to spearhead investment strategies in specific commodities like mango, banana and other high-value crops; and the creation of commodity clusters that will address concerns raised by the private sector and do away with investment “bottlenecks” that discourage businessmen from investing in the farm sector.

Yap noted that although agriculture accounts for a fifth of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), private investments in this critical sector remain minimal compared to other industries.

The sector accounts for 16 percent to 17 percent of GDP and employs 11.9 million Filipinos, or a third of the national labor force. Citing Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) data, Yap noted that agriculture and fisheries receive a measly 4 percent and 0.3 percent of bank loans, respectively.

Yap said this was the reason the DA is pushing for the swift approval of amendments to the Agro-Agra Law, which will remove its provisions that have allowed commercial banks to buy government securities instead of setting aside a mandated portion of their loanable funds for agrarian reform and farm and fisheries development.

He noted that the swift passage of these proposed amendments to the Agro-Agra law have become an utmost necessity in the wake of the ongoing financial crisis, when banks could further tighten lending to the agriculture sector.

Yap said that financial entities providing loans to farmers and fisherfolk are mostly government banks and financial institutions, so “more funds could be unleashed to the farm and fisheries sector by commercial banks only through amendments to the Agro-Agra law.”

The Agro-Agra law mandates that at least 25 percent of banks’ total loanable funds should be made available to the agriculture sector, 15 percent of which is for agriculture stakeholders, and the 10 percent balance for agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs).

In 2007, the total credit requirement of the agriculture sector for palay, corn, coconut, sugarcane and fisheries was estimated at P200 billion, but banks were only able to finance P48 billion or 24 percent of this requirement.

Because of the availability of alternative forms of compliance to the Agro-Agra law, such as investments in government bonds and development loans for education, hospitals and socialized housing, loanable funds are being redirected to these financial instruments.

As of December 2007, the direct compliance rate of banks was only 9.85 percent of the mandated 15 percent for agricultural lending and only 2.24 percent of the 10 percent quota for ARBs, according to BSP data.

By Business Mirror

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Corn Congress Presses 7 Demands

Legazpi City - The three-day 6th Philippine National Corn Congress here adopted seven vital resolutions in an effort to achieve feeds security, alleviate poverty and address the effect of climate change.

With 700 participants from 13 regions representing some 2 million corn farmers, the Philippine Maize Federation Inc. (Philmaize) also asked the congress for the accreditation of Mais Partylist for the upcoming 2010 national elections, said Romualdo Elvira Jr., executive committee chairman of the congress and Philmaize federation director.

Sen. Loren Legarda, chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, and Sen. Francis Escudero, who graced the affair, declared their support for the Mais Partylist accreditation, as well as the other resolutions.

The 6th National Corn Congress was held at the Albay Astrodome here starting Thursday, with the theme “Climate Change…Challenges and Opportunities for the Corn Industry.”

Philmaize president Rod Navarro said climate change has a major effect in corn production. He said the 6th Corn Congress has adopted the Albay declaration on climate-change adaptation as a primary framework to fight for food security and disaster-risk reduction.

Philmaize said proper consumption of water, power and materials would help in the sustainable use of nature’s riches.

Philmaize noted that despite the 7.8-million-metric-ton (MT) yearly production of corn, the agriculture department subsidy for corn program is only P600 million compared with a rice subsidy of P30 billion yearly despite a rice production of only 11 million MT yearly.

There are at least 1.4 million hectares of corn farms, with Region 2 as the biggest producer, followed by Regions 10 and 12. The Bicol region has only 40,000 hectares allocated for corn farming.

Philmaize also assails the banning of BT corn in Bacolod province after the province passed an ordinance last year that prohibited the entry of genetically modified agricultural products.

According to Elvira, corn production during the past year dropped by 15 percent due to climate change, plus the high cost of fertilizer that forced some corn farmers to take a temporary lull in corn farming.

Elvira said the congress concluded with a demand for the creation of the corn cooperative bank initially for Regions 2,10 and 12.

He said the corn farmers are also pushing for an increase in corn-support price from P7 per kilo to P13 per kilo by the National Food Authority (NFA).

He added that the congress also pushed for an additional budget for the Philippine Crop Insurance Corp. (PCIC) to protect corn farmers.

Among the resolutions passed at the end of the corn congress were for the government to impose tariff on imported feed wheat; increase in NFA buying price from P7 per kilo to P13 per kilo; increase of corn-subsidy budget from P600 million to P3.2 billion; and increase of crop-insurance coverage from PCIC.

By Business Mirror

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Agri Lending Program Releases P240M To Co-ops

The government’s agricultural lending program has already released P240.5 million in total loans to the cooperative bank sector from April 2008 to December 2008, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said.

The Cooperative Bank Agri Lending Program (CBAP) is jointly implemented by the cooperative bank sector and the government through the DA and its attached agency, the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC).

“From its formal launch in Pampanga last April 2008 up to end of December 2008, CBAP has released some P240.5 million to accredited coop bank wholesalers, which in turn have disbursed to 4,868 borrowers in the rural areas,” said Agriculture Undersecretary Berna Romulo-Puyat in a statement.

Puyat said the ACPC provided the initial kick-off fund of  P300 million for the CBAP, which will be leveraged at least five times by participating cooperative banks. A total of 24 cooperative banks have pledged to deliver loans amounting to P1.5 billion.

Some of the strategies being eyed to strengthen the program, she said, are the inclusion of loans to long-gestating commodities/projects; provision of an additional P100-million credit fund; and the setting up of an institutional capacity-building component for CBAP-partner coop banks.

Puyat said CBAP is one of the initiatives under the loan component of FIELDS, which stands for Fertilizer, Irrigation, Education and extension, Loans, Driers and other postharvest facilities, and Seeds.

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Veggie Growers Tackle Pricing

Veggie growers in national confab to tackle pricing.

Vegetable growers nationwide were slated to gather here late this month to hold their first national marketing conference to establish an unbroken supply chain from growers to major markets and to iron out the differences between growers and traders.

Rey Acain, president of the Vegetable Producers Council of Southern Mindanao, said industry associations and the Department of Agriculture (DA) would try to identify the major production areas in the country and to link them.

“The summit aims to put together proposed action plans to enhance the existing supply chain for vegetables through improved quality of produce and better post-harvest handling,” said a briefing paper for the April 22 to 23 First National National Vegetable Marketing Congress.

Organizers also hoped that authorities and industry associations would also put up “more efficient logistics and more transparent trading system.”

Acain said the conference would bring together the plaints of farmers and traders against each other “and try to bring out a resolution in the forum” that would be attended by the DA.

On the side of farmers, he said that the market and the pricing of their products were their common problems. “They would say, for example, that despite a previous agreement on the price they have with traders, price would suddenly drop.”

“Traders would just tell them that price is really low, and that’s it,” he said.
Acain said traders would also complain about the “attitude” of farmers and the lack of classification in the packaging of their products.

“Farmers and traders would tackle their concerns in the forum,” he told the regular Wednesday business forum at the Marco Polo Hotel here.

The Vegetable Industry Council of Southern Mindanao, which organized the activity, would bring together the industry leaders in the major production areas such as in Benguet in Luzon, in the Visayas and in Kapatagan, Davao del Sur and in Marahan, Marilog district of this city.

“The big farmers and traders associations would be there to possibly make joint resolutions and agree on certain business terms,” Acain said.

About 120 leaders or representatives of farmer organizations and traders groups are expected to attend the marketing congress, although a bigger participation was noted in the past national and regional congresses of vegetable growers.

In the last national congress of vegetable growers here, about 700 attended.
For the coming marketing congress, Acain said organizers have approached the local governments and asked the mayors to sponsor at least five farmer leaders from their areas.

He said that the agriculture officials would be expected to gather the viewpoints and suggestions in the event to ensure the resolution and implementation of recommendations.

In past congresses, Acain said the industry has benefited from the implemented recommendations such as the seed dispersal, rain shelters and farm-to-market roads.

By Business Mirror

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RP To Join Push for Higher US Sugar Quota

The Philippines would join other sugar-exporting countries in pushing for additional quota from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the event that Washington continues to flip-flop on the issue.

Rafael Coscolluela, administrator of the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA), said that the issue of the sugar quota could be discussed during the mid year conference of the International Sugar Organization (ISO) slated next month in the US.

“Quota holders [may] pursue efforts to get additional [volume] from the US. Discussions will be undertaken if the USDA would not issue a decision on it before the scheduled conference,” Coscolluela said in a telephone interview.

He said a team from the Philippines will be attending the ISO conference next month. Under the 2008 Farm Bill, the USDA can act on the additional sugar quota as early as the first week of April. Until now, however, the USDA has not issued any decision on the sugar quota.

“Our reading is that the USDA seems to be decided on giving an additional quota. But there are a lot of issues at play such as the possibility of bigger exports from Mexico,” he said.

Also, industry groups in the US, such as the American Sugar Alliance (ASA) have been intensively lobbying against the additional quota. ASA issued a statement on April 9, saying that the monthly report on US sugar supplies released by the USDA dashed the hopes of American food manufacturers for additional sugar imports.

USDA figures showed that the supply of US sugar has increased by 320,000 metric tons (MT) because of higher than expected imports from Mexico. With the additional sugar, the US forecast a surplus that swelled to nearly 12 percent, from the USDA’s 4.6-percent projection last September.

Mexico is a trading partner of the US in the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). As sugar trade within the Nafta is liberalized, Mexico could export any amount of sugar to the US in any given year.

The Philippines had hoped of shipping out an additional 65,000MT of sugar if the USDA will decide to increase the southeast Asian nation’s import allocation.

Under the TRQ scheme, the Philippines is allocated around 137,000 MT of “A” sugar each fiscal year. Manila would get 13 percent of the total volume allocated by the US for raw-sugar imports for fiscal year 2009.

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Colombians Find RP’s Top Rice Yield Amazing

Colombians find RP’s top rice yield ‘amazing,’ sign PPP-RP deal

Colombians who are in agribusiness in their own country may be on the verge of adopting a rice technology from the Philippines that can boost the yield per hectare to 380 cavans.

German Cano, president of Colombia’s Delagro Ltd., said he found the Gabuyo-Puyat Profitable Rice Protocol’s (GPP RP) 16-ton to 17-ton per hectare yield simply amazing.

That was shortly before this writer intimated to Cano that for the dry season the yield would be 380 cavans to 400 cavans per hectare, or about 18 tons. The harvest at the Colombians’ farm was nine tons per hectare. The Philippine average yield is three to four tons.

The harvest at the Nueva Ecija farm is schedule on April 20, and the GPP RP group is inviting people to witness the event.

Cano and his partner Javier Guzman were in Manila early this month and signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with Alfonso Puyat, the other half of the owners of the GPP RP technology.

The Colombians went to Nueva Ecija where they saw the field trial of the GPP RP and Palaycheck at the Philrice experimental station.

The Philrice technician acknow-ledged before Cano that the GPP RP rice was taller and had more pinnacles and grains. “Yes,” the Philrice technician said, “but the GPP RP had more inputs and cost more.”

At the Gabuyo farm in Baragay Tondod, where the commercial farm is expected to yield 380 cavans to 400 cavans per hectare, Cano said, “these were simply amazing.”

He pulled a plant from Gabuyo’s farm and a plant from a neighbor’s farm using the Palaycheck system which was expected to yield 180 cavans per hectare. He wanted to see the roots and count the grains.

With their Filipino counterparts, Cano and Guzman also went o visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, Laguna.

The Colombians showed the plants they pulled from Nueva Ecija to Dr.William Padolina, deputy director general of the institute.

They also talked to Dr. Robert Zeigler, IRRI director general, who in the past held a post in Colombia.

The IRRI people were impressed by the plant samples from Nueva Ecija.

As a result of the visit to IRRI, a field trial of the GPP RP might be arranged, but nothing conclusive had been agreed.

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NFA 2009 Rice Seed Procurement Program

NFA will prefer palay from CS in procurement program.

The government will give priority to palay from farmers who will shift from inbred seeds to certified seeds (CS) and those who will shift from CS to hybrid seeds under its palay procurement program for 2009.

The National Food Authority (NFA) said the bulk of the 1 million metric tons (MMT) of paddy rice it is targeting to procure this year will come from areas covered in its Cluster Farming Program.

“Yields from the Cluster Farming Program will cover the bulk of the agency’s procurement volume in 2009 as production is expected at a minimum of 700,000 metric tons (MT) from an area covering at least 235,000 hectares,” NFA administrator Jessup Navarro announced at a Management Committee meeting.

Under the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (GMA) Rice Program of the Department of Agriculture, individual farmers are organized into one manageable entity and are linked to bigger communities such as the municipality and province under the clustering approach.

The cluster approach is implemented by the GMA Rice program as it enables the government to easily execute, monitor and document the rice program in a particular region.

For the procurement of 1 MMT of palay from local farmers, the NFA is expected to spend up to P17 billion which it will borrow from commercial banks.

In 2008, the NFA procured a total of 685,300 MT of paddy rice from local farmers. The agency spent P11.65 billion to purchase the volume from local farmers.

Apart from the purchase of palay, the NFA offered a fertilizer incentive of P1,800 for every 50 cavans palay sold by farmers to the NFA. The incentive was meant to help farmers cope with the unprecedented spike in fertilizer prices last year. As the price of chemical fertilizers has stabilized, the government decided to scrap the incentive this year.

The NFA had figured more prominently in the domestic rice market since last year after the price of rice rose to more than $1,000 per MT. The Philippines was the single biggest factor behind the increase in the price of imported rice as it scrambled to beef up its stocks in the lean months of July to September.

Due to the gap in supply as well as the government’s need to beef up its buffer stocks, the Philippines imported more than 2.3 MMT of rice mainly from Vietnam and Thailand.

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EC gives RP €10M in Food Security Grant

The European Commission (EC) has approved a grant of €10 million or P640 million for the Philippines as part of a package of projects to support agriculture and improve the food security situation in developing countries around the world.

The project in the Philippines, to be implemented by the Department of Agriculture and cofinanced by IFAD (the International Fund for Agricultural Development), will benefit from an EC grant of €10 million to help assure the supply of rice seed and increase rice production, according to the EU office in Manila.

This grant for the Philippines is part of the first financing decisions taken in the framework of the €1-billion Food Facility, approved by the European Union last year in response to the growing food security problems faced by developing countries. Several other projects are also foreseen for the Philippines under the Food Facility, with the financing decisions expected in the coming months.

Commissioner Louis Michel, member of the EC responsible for Development and Humanitarian Aid, said in Brussels that “Europe has already made humanitarian responses to the food crisis through emergency aid. The Food Facility is the development response—€1 billion over 3 years—to get agriculture back on its feet.

The package targets the 23-worst-hit countries in response to the food crisis, which hit developing countries last year.

“Over the months ahead, we must not forget the impact that the financial crisis and economic downturn will have on developing countries. This is only now becoming clear and could be much worse than expected. In attending to recovery plans for our own economy, the EU has in no way diminished our commitment to developing countries—as decisions like this clearly show,” Michel added.

Ambassador Alistair MacDonald, Head of Delegation of the EC to the Philippines, added that “the Food Facility reflects the EU’s commitment to help the Philippines address the challenges of poverty and food security, and in particular to help increase rice production.”

He said the EC has “for many years worked with the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Agrarian Reform in promoting rural development, and [is] happy to be able to help now in relation to food production.”

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NFA To Buy Summer Palay Crop

NFA to buy 3.78 million bags of palay from summer crop.

The National Food Authority (NFA) is eyeing to buy 3.78 million bags of palay from the summer crop at a maximum-support price of P17 per kilogram, depending on moisture content.

While the fertilizer incentive was removed following the slide in the price of chemical fertilizers, the agency has increased the incentive for cooperative development to P0.30 per kilogram and the drying and transport incentives at P0.20 per kg each, the NFA said.

The 3.78 million bags are around 190,000 metric tons (MT) of milled rice, or enough to meet six days of the country’s daily consumption rate of 33,000 MT.

“We are expecting that the average volume of palay bought daily will even increase in the coming days as the summer harvest peaks,” NFA Administrator Jessup Navarro said in a statement.

Navarro said the agency has programmed to buy 1.13 million bags of palay in March, 1.46 million bags in April, 1.18 million bags in May and 301,500 bags in June.

The NFA said it will procure 18 million bags of palay from local farmers this year, equivalent to around 900,000 MT of milled rice. Earlier, the NFA said it will again borrow from commercial banks to fund its palay-buying program.

The agency expects to buy more palay in Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog, Cagayan Valley, Central Mindanao and Ilocos Region.

Last year, the government targeted to buy 20 million bags of palay, equivalent to 1 million metric tons (MMT) of rice, as part of efforts to reduce imports from neighboring countries such as Vietnam and Thailand.

The NFA said it will not make any tender for rice this year, following Manila’s decision to go for government-to-government negotiations to meet its requirements from overseas markets.

While paddy rice production hit a record 16.81 MMT last year, Manila was forced to buy 1.5 MMT of rice from Vietnam to beef up its buffer stocks and plug a production shortfall.

By Business Mirror

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New Philippine Farm Irrigation Facilities

Rehabilitation of facilities forms part of P330-B economic resiliency program.

The government will spend P10B for national irrigation works to repair and restore irrigation facilities for 148,000 hectares of farmlands in Mindanao and the North Luzon Agribusiness Quadrangle (NLAQ).

Apart from the repair and rehabilitation of irrigation facilities for farmlands, the government will also spend P600 million for flatbed dryers and agriculture tramline systems in food-producing areas across the country this year, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said in a statement.

“The rehabilitation of irrigation facilities this year will cover 48,000 hectares of land, while the restoration phase of the project will service an additional 100,000 hectares,” Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said in the statement

The rehabilitation work involves minor repairs of canals and support for irrigation areas, while the restoration part entails the repair of canal structures, diversion works and excavations to bring water back to “non functional irrigated areas.”

In Mindanao, Yap said rehabilitation work would cover 15,993 hectares of irrigation facilities and the restoration of 31,781 hectares.

In NLAQ where Yap is the government’s steward, the rehabilitation work will cover 17,865 hectares and 42,971 hectares for restoration work.

For the Metro Luzon Urban Beltway, excluding the National Capital Region, the target is to rehabilitate 8,634 hectares of irrigation facilities and restore another 10,846 hectares.

There are 5,508 hectares up for rehabilitation and 14,405 hectares for restoration in Central Philippines, according to the statement.

Yap said the government would also undertake water impounding works and other related projects that are locally funded.

He said the rehabilitation and repair of irrigation facilities and the provision of postharvest facilities are part of the government’s P330-billion “economic resiliency program” or the Comprehensive Livelihood and Emergency Employment Program.

By Business Mirror

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