No price increases at farm level despite Yolanda

MANILA, Philippines - After consulting its members from Luzon, Mindanao and parts of calamity-stricken Visayas, the agriculture industry alliance SINAG (Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura) committed not to increase farmgate prices of basic food and agriculture commodities.

Since last week, SINAG has been releasing its weekly Farmgate Price Watch which lists down the price of agri products as sold by farms to guide government and the consuming public on the actual price changes of basic food commodities.

SINAG explained that farmgate prices are typically lower than the retail price consumers pay since these exclude costs of transport, handling, storage, marketing and profit margins.

An umbrella organization of more than 30 groups of rice, corn and vegetable farmers and traders, pork, livestock and poultry producers, aquaventure groups and fertilizer and pesticide suppliers, SINAG said damage to the agriculture sector is minimal and will have no immediate impact on domestic supply of basic food and agriculture commodities.

 Representing millions of workers in the farming and allied sectors, SINAG said there is no justifiable reason for any dramatic increase on the retail prices of basic food commodities since there is enough domestic supply and farmgate prices have remained stable over the last three weeks.

Earlier, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said damage to the sector due to super typhoon Yolanda is estimated at P6.88 billion.

 Breaking this figure, SINAG explained that the P2.23-billion loss of the rice sector, or around 133,000 metric tons of palay, accounts for only four days of national rice consumption (at 33,000 metric tons rice consumption per day).

“Nakaharvest na ang karamihan ng rice farmers natin, from Luzon to Mindanao, even before Yolanda struck the country. There is ample supply of rice in the country,” said Rosendo So, SINAG chairman.

“For the past four weeks until yesterday, palay farmgate prices remain the same, around P21.50 to P22 per kilo,” added Jojie Co of Philcongrains and a SINAG leader.

On the other hand, the P443.47 million worth of livestock damage, as estimated by DA, represents less than one percent of the gross value of the livestock industry and its allied sectors, said Dan Javellana, a SINAG trustee and chair of the National Federation of Hog Farmers Inc.

Meanwhile, SINAG urged the Department of Finance (DOF) and the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to immediately release to Yolanda victims food and essential non-food products recently confiscated by the customs bureau.