Revive NFA, FTI first

Revive NFA, FTI first | Daily Tribune

President Bongbong Marcos has announced that effective immediately, the National Food Authority will buy freshly harvested palay from P16 to P19 per kilo and dry palay from P19 to P23 per.

The President said this should improve farmers' incomes and ensure a sufficient supply of the staple.

Of course.

Some quarters immediately sang the praises of the President, but this is easier said than done.

I suspect the members of the NFA Council had given PBBM false data for him to give such an order — as if, with a click of his finger, the NFA can do what he wants done.

PBBM is no Moses who, by striking a boulder with his staff, got water to spout in the desert. The NFA is an entirely different story.

Mr. President, Sir, the NFA is no longer what it was when your father was president.

It used to be that in strategic places, each NFA station was equipped with a rice mill, a vast solar concrete drier and, more importantly, silos. As they say, "Them were the days!"

These days, except for solar driers, rice mills and silos for drying and storage have either been cannibalized or deteriorated after the Cory Aquino administration took over. In short, the NFA was simply mothballed.

NFA buying stations had fund allocations big enough to buy the farmers' produce, especially during harvest season. The NFA bought freshly harvested paddy rice. Farmers do not have drying facilities, so they use cement roads to dry their harvest. With the NFA, fresh palay harvests were dried either in solar dryers or silos.

What I am trying to point out is that PBBM must first order the thorough rehab and refitting of the NFA rice mills, solar dryers, and stockrooms. While the national budget for 2024 is being deliberated, the Department of Agriculture must submit an amended budget that should include a fund for the NFA to purchase farmers' crops and for the rehabilitation of its facilities.

Setting the buying price within the P19 to P20 per kilo range at the farmer's gate is fair enough. At that price, farmers with access to irrigation can plant rice twice a year.

If PBBM can enter into a fertilizer supply agreement with China and sell this to farmers through NFA stations at cost, this will be a big boost to rice productivity.

As an aside, Finance Secretary Ben Diokno should have recommended the lifting of tariffs on farm inputs instead of imported rice.

And yes, with NFA buying palay and selling milled rice through accredited retailers or "Kadiwa" rolling stores, this Marcos administration can bring down the cost of rice to within the P28 to P30 per kilo range.

Anyway, it is noteworthy that President Bongbong realized that incentivizing rice farming through the reasonable buying price of palay is one of the tools to prime agricultural productivity. All he must do now is to check whether NFA has the wherewithal to undertake what he wants done.

While the President is at it, he might as well revive the Food Terminal Inc., an important adjunct of the NFA that Marcos Sr. created to buy and bring perishable food commodities from the provinces to the consumer markets, particularly Metro Manila.

FTI was equipped with a chain of cold storage facilities where meat and poultry products, fruits, and vegetables were stored before being brought to the main FTI complex in Taguig. Wholesalers and retailers bought what they needed at FTI-Taguig. Kadiwa rolling stores sourced their supplies from the FTI, too.

Again, just a word of caution, PBBM should order an audit of the cold storage infrastructure of FTI in Taguig to see if they are still operating. The last I heard, the FTI board and management leased what was left of the facilities and sold the vital real estate assets for a song to the mestizos of Makati who had supported the Edsa revolution.