FOOD FOR THOUGHT

By V. L. SONNY DOMINGO

Our farmers are again made pawns in the mid-term elections with the RICE TARIFFICATION issue. This is very unfortunate in the lives of our small farmers that will now have the prospects of losing their livelihood due to the unpreparedness of the DA in giving them the support needed.

The newly signed RICE TARRIFICATION LAW (RTL) by PRES. RODRIGO R. DUTERTE despite the opposition of his agricultural managers is a manifestation of a political will to favor the many against the vested interest of the few even as they are his supporters.

A very strong opposition asking the President to veto the bill or amend it remains. The economic managers of Pres. Duterte told the agricultural managers “it is the economy stupid” and telling them on their face that they are now the weakest link for the economy to continue with its growth, the fastest in Asia.

The tariffication can never be anti farmer or anti poor says Sen. Cynthia A. Villar because it was designed precisely to protect the farmers from cheap rice entering the country by slapping a 35% to 50% TAX on imported rice to even the playing field and so that the inefficient rice farmers can still compete in pricing. It is now becoming an election issue against her. If she loses and a combative Senate wins, they may just amend the law to favor a few. She Championed the cause of the smallholder farmer and may lose her Senate seat in the process.

The RICE TARIFFICATION LAW will now stop hoarding by unscrupulous traders to spike the price for more profits and the manipulation of rice pricing to favor the traders. If the rice cartel will still continue to hoard to spike prices, anyone can now import to take advantage of its profitability until such time that the rice supply will balance the demand and the price will remain affordable for the consumers as the palay farmers will continue to enjoy a better farm gate price that will now be beyond the manipulation of the rice cartel.

However, rice tariffication will FAIL if the Duterte administration through DA fails to do the following;

Change its present agricultural managers who continue to oppose the Rice Tariffication for reasons of their own. (They will never be effective in implementing the spirit of the law which is for them to support farmers to be more cost efficient and buy from them the buffer stock needed to insure a sustainable farm gate price for the small holder farmers).

Stop NFA from selling their assets to pay their loan. They will be selling the warehouses built from the incomes of NFA’s monopoly on wheat importation to capacitate them to buy high from the farmers and regulate the price by milling their palay during lean months to control the price manipulation of the traders. (The monopoly was taken away from NFA by the Cory administration which gave it back to the wheat cartel to the detriment of the farmers and the consumers). This then made the NFA irrelevant for the last 30 years). DA should instead add more warehouses for the NFA and provide it with buffer stocking funds to provide a market for the inefficient small holder farmers until they can become competitive and may even export.

Order DA to now revise its program and budget to align with the objectives of the RTL to provide a support system for the farmers to be cost-effective by providing them a social capital instead of a dole-out to own and operate their tractor pool and rice mill complex for cost effectiveness and value adding.

Stop the DA secretary from misleading the public showing the seeming weakness of the RTL instead of contributing to its objective of making small holder to be globally competitive by providing its budget to promote integrated farming systems., third party farm credit, and providing professional managers and licensed agriculturists to farm clusters that will be provided with electrigation (electric irrigation pumps) to irrigate more rainfed areas and encourage co-operative farming to do commercial farming towards the economies of scale that will enable them to have the volume to sell at any time and negotiate for better profits.

Provide free electricity to water pumps when planting rice and high value vegetables for the consumers.

Convert the National Food Authority into a National Farmers Corporation with representative of accredited farmer federations into its Board of Directors to do the buffer stocking and provide farm credit to get it out of the clutches of the rice cartel.

Rice encompasses all of Philippine agriculture because of the more than 100 million that eat it from birth to death and the livelihood of 20 million with a voting power of at least 50% of the 50 million votes that elect a president every six years. This was proven when PRRD made FREE IRRIGATION as his number one commitment. Whatever the political experts say, the silent voting power of our farmers made him president. Will our farmers give him the Senate?

And so what then is the farmers’ future?

( V.L. Sonny Domingo is a member of the Board of Agriculture of the Professional Regulation Commission and a Farmer Rights Advocate as the permanent national chairman of Kapisanan ng Magsasaska, Mangingisda, at Manggagawa ng Pilipinas. He has 50 years experience in subsistence farming and served as consultant of various commercial farms.)