Farmers press for NFA rice allocation
Written by Raadee S. Sausa

MALOLOS CITY: A federation of farmers’ cooperative in Central Luzon is appealing to the National Food Administration (NFA) to implement its 2011 Institutionalized Farmers as Distributors (IFAD) program on Thursday.
Simeon Sioson, Federation of Central Luzon Farmers Cooperatives chair said that the damages brought by the recent Typhoons Pedring and Quiel have brought untold miseries to their economic lives.

With the damages brought by the two recent typhoons to farm lands, Sioson said their group believes that the current month of December and January are already considered as rice lean months.

Rice traders in Intercity Industrial subdivision in Bocaue, a major rice trading center of the country, have confirmed that commercial trading of locally harvested palay this wet harvest season that are to be milled into rice have drastically decreased compared to previous years, Sioson said.

Commercial prices of palay in Intercity depending on its quality were monitored to range from P15 to P16.50 per kilo for flood affected palay, way above the P7, P9 and P11 buying price of the NFA while commercial prices for Class A palay were monitored to range from P18-P19.50 per kilo, also way above the P17.50 buying price of NFA.

The price range of commercial palay only shows that there are only small stocks of commodities to be traded and that government intervention is needed to prevent prices of the staple crop to increase particularly this Christmas time, Sioson noted.

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