Pambansang Kilusan ng Samahan ng Magsasaka (PAKISAMA) said the country could lose its farming sector in the coming years if imports continue to flood the country.
“ Majority of our farmers are old. There are no more farmers to replace them because the (younger generations) see(s) no future in farming. It won’t be long until these farmers start selling their lands. These lands will not be used for agricultural purposes. This is a threat to our nation’s food security. We cannot rely on Vietnam or Thailand for our food,” said Rene Cerilla, PAKISAMA legal and policy advocacy officer, in an online briefing yesterday.
Cerilla said the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) did not deliver on its promise of lowering the price of rice and of granting assistance to all rice farmers as only farmers who belong to organized groups got the aid.
Asis Perez, convenor of food advocacy group Tugon Kabuhayan urged government to immediately assess the implementation of RTL and the impact of its P10- billion annual rice fund.
“With its automatic review under Section 13, we want to know if the annual P10 billion rice fund is being spent according to the law which says that 50 percent should go to rice farm machineries and equipment; 30 percent to rice seed development, propagation and promotion; 10 percent for expanded rice credit assistance; and another 10 percent to rice extension services. Specifically, we want to know if this allocation should be revised based on what our rice producers really need,” Perez said.
Raul Montemayor, national manager of the Federation of Free Farmers, said because of RTL, farmers’ incomes along with palay prices went down. Consumers saved P16.34 billion but farmers lost P66 billion since the law was passed in 2019.
“The cost of producing palay even went up despite the P10 billion subsidy given by the Department of Agriculture (DA). Cash assistance is only a band-aid solution to the problem.
The government gives P5,000 per hectare, free seeds, among others but it doesn’t fix the broken system that we have. There is a disjoint between the disease and the remedy,” Montemayor said.
