NFA Must Help! Stabilize Feed Prices By Building Corn Silos

The National Food Authority (NFA) must once again adopt Corn as one of the agricultural products that it will support, as it had done in the past, to stabilize buying prices and ensure affordable feeds for the country’s poultry and livestock industry.
The buying price of corn in Mindanao has dropped from a high of P25 per kilo late last year to only P14 in many interior parts of the corn producing areas in the island.
With the price of Corn seeds ranging from P10,000 to P12,000 per hectare and fertilizer costs increasing three-folds, Corn farming is slowly becoming an unattractive farming activity.
The plummeting price of corn during peak harvest season has always been a problem for corn farmers in Mindanao for as long as I could remember.
Traders take advantage of the absence of drying and storage facilities and set the prices at very low levels and since they have the warehouses and drying facilities, they hold on to the stocks and release these to the market during off-harvest season.
By doing this, traders make a killing during the off-season for corn, very much like what is being done by the Onion Cartel.
In fact, when my late father was a member of the Provincial Board of North Cotabato in the late 80s, he led farmers’ groups to the halls of the Senate to ask for legislative action on the unfair and unjust practice by traders to drop the buying price of corn during peak harvest season.
At that time, corn farmers of Cotabato, especially the Arakan Valley, either dumped their harvests by the side of the road or burned their corn to show their displeasure at the seeming inability of government to help and protect them.
Looking back and getting a better understanding of how government works, the crusade which my father and the corn farmers’ waged was all for naught because legislation could not possibly correct a flawed market system.
Today, 40 years after that futile Corn Crusade waged by my father and the corn farmers, I see light at the end of the tunnel with the recent appointment of a corn industry advocate, Roderico Bioco, as administrator of the National Food Authority.
Rod Bioco, who was the head of the PhilMaize Advocacy group was one of the resource persons when I designed the Mindanao Corn Development Program when I was Chairman of the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA).
The program was part of the proposal submitted to the EU delegation to be included for funding under the EU Grant Funds.i
MinDA proposed the establishment of Corn Storage Complexes using the modern Silo systems equipped with dryers in the four major corn producing regions of Mindanao – Region IX Zamboanga Peninsula, Region X Northern Mindanao, Region XII Central Mindanao and the Bangsamoro Region.
I have not been updated on the progress of this proposal to the EU, which unfortunately is also a slowpoke in implementing projects that it had committed to the Philippines.
Even without the EU, the Philippine Government could do this project on its own by placing the Corn Industry again under the auspices and support of the NFA.
The funding for the establishment of the Corn Grains Silo Complex in the major corn production areas, not only of Mindanao but all over the country, will free our corn farmers from the exploitation by unscrupulous traders.
When this is done, the supply of corn will be stabilized, farmers will get a fair income from their labor while feed mills will assured of a sustainable supply of corn thus stabilizing the prices of feeds for poultry and livestock.
#GovernanceIsCommonSense!
#KungGustoMaramingParaan!