What’s done is done. With Filipino farmers reeling over the mishandling of support mechanisms embodied in the Rice Tariffication Act (RTL), the Department of Agriculture (DA) should prepare for the coming planting season to ensure that past mistakes are not repeated.
As an immediate response to our farmers’ loss in income resulting from the record drop in farmgate prices of palay, the government should immediately release the necessary funds to compensate for the unfortunate turn of events.
The P5 billion initial fund that was supposed to have been released in December last year in anticipation of the proposed law signed by the President has apparently not reached our farmers. A full accounting of this money must be made since this was a one-time allocation.
It is not at all our farmers’ fault that this year’s national budget was delayed, so much so that the initial monies collected from the higher duties on imported rice under the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) was also not distributed in time for the start of planting last June.
Instead of receiving the necessary inputs like certified rice seeds, mechanical farming equipment, credit, and training that would have helped soften the blow caused by increased rice importation, farmers were forced to face the ensuing rice glut unprepared and without any support.
Temporary measures
Still, it’s not too late for the government to come up with temporary measures similar to what Congress recently initiated to help farm areas sell their excess rice production to the Department of Social Welfare and Development for its Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4P).
Similarly, the approved P5,000 cash dole out to each of the 600,000 farmers who own one hectare or less of rice farms is already a welcome initiative by the government, even if this will just cover roughly 20 percent of the affected farmers.
The money that will be spent, totaling P3 billion, is expected come from the tariff collections on rice imports in excess of P10 billion, the latter amount having been set aside by rice law for a specific set of expenditures and disbursed through the RCEF.
As of the end of October, collections by the Department of Finance and the Bureau of Customs were reportedly at P15 billion. This is only to be expected since importations have reached a record high of 3.1 million metric tons already in September, compared to 2.5 MMT for the whole of 2018.
Better measures
Lessons from the above should enable the DA to draw up better measures in 2020 to avoid the flood of excessive imported rice, especially when farmers are about to harvest. Already, the USDA projects our rice imports declining next year, although still above the five-year average.
On the other hand, the disbursement of the P5,000 cash, planned before yearend, should help the DA plot a databank of beneficiaries geographically identified and segregated, which should be most useful in the future, like when providing help in times of calamities.
More importantly, the cash dole out should be in exchange for more valuable information about the farmer-beneficiaries’ actual yields, use of seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, and other relevant farming inputs that will become the basis for future government inputs under the rice enhancement program.
Certified seeds
By this time, even before farmers start preparing the land for the next planting season, the DA should already be prepared to implement a Philippine Rice Industry Roadmap (PRIR), as well as the mechanics for the drawdown of the P10 billion allotted for the RCEF.
Of the four major components under the RCEF, the planned rice seed distribution should provide the most immediate and biggest benefit. Over a million rice farmers who will receive 80 kilograms of certified rice seeds for two consecutive seasons should be able to demonstrate the new paradigms of the new rice regime.
Under the rice roadmap’s broad directive, focus will be given on improving rice farmers’ productivity with commensurate quantifiable targets that define increasing the average yield of every hectare farmed, reducing the cost of production of producing palay, managing post-harvest losses, and bringing down marketing costs.
Prior to the distribution of inbred and other certified rice seeds, farmers should already have attended technical briefings on seed preparation and other interventions and technologies from the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) to help them achieve improved yields.
Over the next two planting seasons, the correct practice of using certified seeds that are high in genetic purity, germination and vigor, and of good quality should be able to provide valuable lessons to participating farmers, and inspire others as well to use them.
Mechanization
The biggest share of collected tariffs under the RCEF, amounting to P5 billion every year for six years, is for the modernization of rice farming through the distribution of mechanized farm implements that cooperatives and farmer associations would manage.
The Philippine Center for Post Harvest Development and Modernization (PhilMech) is confident that the various planting and harvesting implements that will be distributed as grants-in-aid to qualified farmer groups will further improve land yields.
Mechanization, however, will not be expected to contribute significantly to raising productivity under the rice industry roadmap’s first year as farmers have to be educated on the rudiments of sharing and usage of the many different farm equipment that will be available to them.
However, should the deployment of the farm machinery and implements be successful, the country can really look forward in succeeding years to improved rice harvests, and more importantly, significantly improved earnings for rice farmers and their families.
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