Bantay Bigas spokesperson Cathy Estavillo said the plan runs contrary to NFA’s earlier statement that it would “focus all its logistics, funds and personnel on aggressive palay buying.”
Estavillo noted in a statement that the NFA’s plan was on top of the 500,000 MT expected to arrive from abroad in the next months until August purportedly to fill in the need for a 15-day buff er stock and that Agriculture Sec. Emmanuel Pinol had already announced he would approve the proposed imports once the NFA submits the proposal.
This, even as National Federation of Peasant Women (Amihan) national chair Zenaida Soriano lamented that “the Duterte government is talking about boosting NFA rice stocks with rice importation as a primary option as if local production is not a choice.”
“This government is willing to shell out P6.7 billion for importation while it barely spends its P7 billion budget for local palay procurement. It is quick to decide to increase its reference price while the farmers who have long been calling for increased support subsidies and increased palay purchasing price are ignored,” Soriano said.
In a common statement, Amihan and Bantay Bigas said “NFA should have used its P7 billion budget for local procurement during the harvest season which was also the peak of the NFA rice shortage. If the support price is increased at P20 per kilo of palay, it could have bought 350,000 MT which is equivalent to 227, 500 MT or 4.5 million bags of rice, good for seven days buffer stock.”
“We are dismayed that since the Duterte’s presidency, no guarantees to Filipino farmers have been given as aid while government has failed to upgrade rice self-sufficiency, accessibility and affordability to poor consumers. Instead of thinking band-aid, the government should adequately provide support to agricultural production, starting from free irrigation services, inputs, machineries and post-harvest services,” Estavillo said.
The groups denounced the Duterte government’s “continuing dependence on rice importation leaving the country’s food security at the hands of other countries and as a result, making the country’s rice supply more vulnerable to the dictates of rice importing countries, especially in times of shortage.”
“The only way that we can sustain and secure food in the country is for the government to direct its efforts in attaining rice self-sufficiency through free land distribution and provision of support and subsidies for agricultural production such as provision of free irrigation services, inputs, machineries and post-harvest services. The authentic track towards food security and self-sufficiency is the realization of genuine agrarian reform and nationalist rice industry development programs,” Estavillo said.
