Farmers in Palawan town manage to sell palay at higher price

Amid a huge drop in palay prices in several regions of the country, some farmers in a town in Palawan have managed to sell their unmilled rice at prices way above the prevailing buying price of the state-run National Food Authority.

At least P100,000 worth of their ready to mill palay will be sold at P25 per kilo through the farmers' partnership with the local government of Narra and a local agro-forestry tourist destination at Barangay Bacungan.

The farmers belong  to indigenous peoples communities who are cultivating organic upland palay.

Under the partnership, Yamang Bukid Farm will not only buy palay from the farmers at a higher price, but also keep only half of the rice as they plan to return the other half to the farmers once they are milled.

Farm officials said the amount to be used to pay for the palay stock would be coming from the net proceeds of a fun run for the farmers staged by the farm tourism destination in October.

For their part, Narra, Palawan Vice Mayor Crispin Lumba Jr. said the local government will shoulder the drying and milling of the palay and assist in the transportation of the grains from the upland down to the town proper.

Lumba said his town is already planning to push for a similar initiative of helping the farmers by buying their palay at much higher prices.

George Maria, Yamang Bukid Farm Palawan vice president for community affairs, said they expected to help dozens of impoverished IP farmers through the partnership.

“What we’re doing is really small, but we hope this could snowball into something big and spur other businesses, well-off individuals and organizations to do the same so we can help alleviate the sorry situation of our farmers,” he said.

Farm officials said they would use their part of the palay for redistribution during their Christmas outreach missions in December, and use the collected rice bran or "darak," as swine feed.

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) last week said that its monitoring indicated that palay prices have already dropped to as low as P8 in some regions of the country.

The government earlier attributed such declines to the implementation of the Rice Tariffication Law, which removed the quantitative restrictions on rice imports and imposed a 35% tariff on shipments from Southeast Asia.

The Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Credit Policy Council (DA-ACPC) and the Land Bank of the Philippines last month signed a memorandum of agreement to implement a P1.5-billion recovery assistance program for rice farmers affected by declining palay prices.

The government earlier said it has increased the price it buys palay (unmilled rice), but removed incentives local farmers were enjoying.

According to Agriculture Secretary William Dar, the NFA Council on September 10 decided that the government would buy palay from local farmers at a support price of P19 per kilogram. — MDM, GMA News