Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said the Philippines needs to invest at least P1.3 trillion over the next few years to boost rice production, reduce wastage of agricultural products and ensure the country’s food security.
Laurel in a briefing in Malacanang on Tuesday said irrigating 1.2 million of farm lands planted to rice would require P1.2 trillion in capital spending.
“No major post-harvest facility was funded by government in the last 40 years. All of them were small which is actually irrelevant, useless… We need to fund these projects. But we must build bigger. We have three designs–small, medium and large, not mini,” Laurel said.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) said P90 billion is needed to build integrated rice mill and warehouse complexes to reduce an estimated 15 percent in losses in rice due to the lack of post-harvest facilities.
Laurel said these facilities would mean a recovery of P10.7 billion worth rice equivalent to additional 23 days of inventory, displacing around 10 of imports based on last year’s figures.
He said this year alone, P1 billion has been allocated to build four cold storage facilities, primarily at the Food Terminal Inc. (FTI) Complex in Taguig City, to partly address the recurrent oversupply and wastage of vegetables in parts of Luzon alone.
“If we try to solve the problem as soon as possible, assuming a target of 2025, I need an additional P5 billion to address the vegetable cold-storage issue of the whole nation,” Laurel said.
DA said the 5,000-pallet position cold storage facility in FTI will take at least 12 months to complete, noting that it is crucial as transporting vegetables from Benguet to Metro Manila at present, usually result in 30 percent losses that are eventually passed on to consumers.