DA offers fertilizer vouchers to farmers for increased rice yields

Malacañang said Sunday that the Department of Agriculture (DA) will be providing poor farmers with fertilizer vouchers to boost rice production.

DA's Memorandum Order (MO) No. 65 series of 2022 provides that the fertilizer vouchers will be used by farmer-beneficiaries for urea fertilizers in order to “[cushion] the potential impacts of under-application of urea...," the memo signed by Senior Undersecretary Domingo Panganiban states.

MO No. 65 stems from an amendment to the implementing guidelines of the fertilizer discount voucher project of the National Rice Program.

"The use of fertilizer vouchers offers an alternative to [poor farmers] to buy a sufficient volume of urea recommended for their rice area,” according to MO 65.

Also, it said that the project shall cover beneficiary-farmers in regions planting inbred and hybrid rice seeds, except for the National Capital Region (NCR) and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

Qualified beneficiaries for the program are rice farmers registered in the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA), those encoded in the Farmers and Fisherfolk Registry System (FFRS), and those who will be planting during the 2022-2023 dry cropping season.

Farmers tilling two hectares and below will also be prioritized, the DA pointed out.

For the 2022-2023 dry cropping season, the project aims to:

• enable rice farmers to supplement the requirement for urea fertilizer for their rice production; mitigate the impacts of the projected decline in production due to low usage of urea fertilizer and attain the target yield of 4.22 metric tons per hectare of palay for 2023; and,
• stabilize the rice supply situation in the country despite challenges in the price of commercial fertilizers

Beneficiaries shall use the one-time fertilizer vouchers to claim urea fertilizers at their preferred DA-accredited dealers, distributors, and outlets. Urea fertilizers must be registered under the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (FPA).

Discount voucher value shall also be computed based on the rice farm area.

In determining the voucher value per cropping season, the DA said that the fund source is divided into the number of hectares to be served under the project as a complement to the inbred and hybrid seed distribution program of the Rice Program.

Meanwhile, for the 2022 wet season cropping, the fertilizer vouchers shall be used by the farmer-beneficiaries to claim the inorganic fertilizers, organic fertilizers, foliar fertilizers, biological fertilizers or biological stimulants at accredited merchants. These must also be registered under the FPA or the Bureau of Agriculture and Fisheries Standards (BAFS).

The discount voucher shall have a value equivalent to P1,131 per hectare for Also, MO 65 states that a supplemental fund sourced from an unprogrammed regular fund of the DA, over and above the 2022 General Appropriations Act (GAA) budget, was released “to enable rice farmers to meet the recommended urea fertilizer, thereby, securing rice production in the country.”

Moreover, the DA said the 2022 wet season implementation of the project was funded under the 2022 General Appropriations Act (GAA), while the 2022-2023 dry season implementation would be funded under the 2022 GAA and the unprogrammed funds. —LBG, GMA Integrated News