By Manny Piñol
The Valentine’s Day Bigas ng Masa TienDA scheduled tomorrow in front of the Department of Agriculture (DA) Central Office in Quezon City where commercial rice will be sold for only P38 per kilo will mark the start of a nationwide program which would directly connect rice farmers with consumers.
Yesterday, I directed DA Undersecretary for Policy and Planning Segfredo Serrano and Undersecretary for Agribusiness and Marketing Bernadette Romulo Puyat to prepare a national program where DA will assist farmers’ groups, associations and cooperatives, including irrigators’ associations, in the milling, packaging and marketing of their rice produce which would be sold directly to consumers.
Regional Directors will be asked to initially allow farmers’ groups to use open spaces in the DA regional offices to serve as the outlets of their rice produce.
After that, Bigas ng Masa TienDA will be established in every town throughout the country to provide consumers with affordable freshly-milled rice direct from the farms.
Farmers groups will be assisted by the DA so that they will be in complete control of their farm operations – from plowing, planting, harvesting, milling, packaging and marketing.
We will link up this program with the Land Bank of the Philippines, where I sit as member of the Board of Directors, so that farmers’ groups we will provided with a working capital so they could buy their members’ produce.
The Bigas ng Masa TienDA outlets will just be mainly rice outlets but farmers will later be allowed to sell other farm products as well, depending on the availability of space.
The Bigas ng Masa TienDa is the first step in our efforts to directly link our farmers with consumers and end the age-old anomalous farm-to-market supply chain which is controlled by middlemen and traders.
Let me clarify that I have nothing against people making money by doing business related to food supply.
What I am concerned about, however, is the indiscriminate profiteering by traders and middlemen of food commodities by jacking up prices beyond the reach of ordinary consumers.
While the rule of thumb says that the price of rice should only be double the buying price of paddy rice, commercial rice in the market is sold from P45 to P60, instead of just about P38.
As I have declared in previous statements, I believe that in implementing the directive of President Rody Duterte of ensuring “Available and Affordable Food” for the Filipinos, the mandate of the DA is not only to produce food but also to make sure that the abundance of food is translated into affordable prices by the ordinary consumers.
They have successfully implemented this scheme in Japan and South Korea while in the US, individual farmers deal directly with the outlets.
In South Korea, farmers have federated into a national cooperative called Nong Hyup and they operate their own supermarkets, banks, cargo and insurance companies.
I do not dream of achieving that in my term as President Duterte’s Secretary of Agriculture but I hope that by the end of his Presidency, we would have empowered and capacitated our farmers to the point that they will no longer be at the mercy of traders and middlemen.
That advocacy is expected to result in “Available and Affordable Food” for the Filipino people.
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