DA offers grains dryers to farmers

IN an effort to encourage farm­ers to sell their produce to the Na­tional Food Authority (NFA), the Department of Agriculture (DA) will establish mechanical grains dryers in NFA buying stations which could be used for free.

In his latest Facebook post, Ag­riculture Secretary Manny Piñol said he has issued a memoran­dum to regional executive direc­tors to identify the NFA buying stations located in strategic areas which could be prioritized in the Free Grains Drying Program.

The NFA has been buying farm­ers produce at Php17 per kilo, a price which could not compete with private traders who buy farm fresh paddy rice at as high as Php22 to Php24 per kilo.

During the last meeting of the NFA Council, Piñol proposed that additional incentives be given to farmers and farmers cooperatives that would increase their earnings to about Php20 per kilo.

In addition to the incentives to individual farmers, farmers asso­ciations and cooperatives will also get “bonuses” from the DA for sell­ing their rice to the NFA.

The “bonuses” include:

1. Priority in the granting of Pro­duction Loan Easy Access Credit amounting to Php50,000 per farming family at 6% interest without col­lateral payable in 1 year;
2. Free farm machinery and equipment for a specified volume of palay sold to the NFA which would include Turtle Tiller, Power Tiller, Small 50HP Tractor, Mechanized Transplanter, Mechanical Harvester and others.

The regional directors have been directed to start the incentives and “bonus” program this harvest sea­son.

The NFA will also be allowed to mill the rice they have bought from the farmers in the over 160 units of Rice Processing Complex located all over the country.

In a separate FB post, Piñol said the DA, implementing policies on Food Safety, and the National Food Authority (NFA) will jointly form in­spection teams to check imported rice from Vietnam, Thailand or other sources before its shipment to the country.

The measure was adopted during the NFA Council meeting to prevent a repeat of rice shipments infested with weevils or “bukbok.”

The measure is also expected to check on the compliance by private importers to the new policy of the NFAC which allows the importation only of rice classified as 25% Bro­ken.

The DA, under the Food Safety Act, sets guidelines on Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary Standards on all imported agriculture and fishery products, especially food.

It could stop the entry of food items which could pose threats to health and safety.

In the case of imported rice, the DA SPS teams could check not only the presence of “Bukbok” or Wee­vils but also chemical residues.

The NFA inspection team could also thwart misdeclaration or tech­nical smuggling through the ship­ment of Fancy or Premium Rice instead of 25% Broken as specified in the new NFAC policy.