THE Federation of Free Farmers urged Congress to utilize the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) in developing and strengthening the whole rice seed system instead of merely distributing free planting materials to farmers.
Under the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL), P3 billion out of the P10 billion allocated annually for RCEF are spent mainly to propagate and distribute inbred rice seeds for selected rice farmers by the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice).
FFF said since RTL’s enactment in 2019, PhilRice has given an average of 3.3 million 20-kilo bags of certified seeds to 1.5 million farmers each year.
“If we focus only on the distribution of free seeds, the whole program will collapse once funding from RCEF is phased out. All our efforts to promote and sustain the use of quality seeds will go to waste,” said Raul Montemayor, FFF national manager, in a statement.
FFF said while the rice seed subsidy scheme has been among the best performing programs under RCEF, there are reports of delayed delivery and poor quality of seeds and mismatches between available stocks and preferred varieties of farmers.
“Aside from quality seeds, farmers also need support for irrigation, fertilizer, credit, farm machinery, crop insurance, marketing assistance and other key interventions which may not all be covered by RCEF. Hence, RCEF should not be seen as a stand-alone program but rather as part of a comprehensive and integrated support system for rice farmers,” Montemayor said.
