By Madelaine B. Miraflor
More than farm inputs and financial assistance, the Philippine rice sector is facing a bigger problem in labor shortage for rice farms, especially during this COVID-19 lockdown period.
In a text exchange, Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) National Manager Raul Montemayor said the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a bigger problem for the agriculture sector, especially in the local rice production, which the government intends to save with ₱8.5 billion in fresh funding.
“We still have problems with accessing seeds, fertilizer, loans, and hiring farm labor because of lockdowns. We also have transport problems,” Montemayor said.
There are an estimated over 2 million rice farmers in the Philip¬pines. Technically, Montemayor said this number is enough to help the Department of Agriculture (DA) achieve its newly resurrected rice self-sufficiency plan.
But Montemayor said existing farmers are still having a hard time to tend to their farms because of lockdown restrictions.
“There are still reports about this. Some farmers look after farms that are in another barangay or nearby town but because of strict ECQ rules, they are prevented to go anywhere,” Montemayor said.
“There is also a problem with farmers who are 60 years old and up and who are the only ones left farming in their family but are not allowed to go out,” he added.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) already came up with an advisory allowing farmers to work on their farms provided they are healthy and practice social distancing, but some local government units (LGU) are still preventing farmers from getting through their checkpoints.
“If farmers are not allowed to farm, they cannot produce food,” Montemayor said.
Some 600,000 farmers, or those tilling 0.5 hectares to two hectares of land and registered in the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA), are bound to receive ₱5,000 one-time cash assistance from the government under the DA’s Financial Subsidy to Rice Farmers (FSRF) and Rice Farmers Financial Assistance (RFFA).
FSRF is an unconditional cash transfer that is part of the DA’s initiatives to assist small rice farmers located in 24 provinces amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Already, the rice tariffication law already drove rice farmers away from their farms. US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) here in Manila said in one of its industry reports that Filipino farmers’ decision to abandon rice farming amid declining palay prices is already taking a toll on the Philippines' rice production.
“Some farmers are likely to shift to other crops, whereas others continue the trend of converting lands to other commercial purposes,” FAS said.
Farmers' decision to abandon rice farming and shift to other crops is a result of the decline in the price of locally produced palay, which was triggered by the entry of large volume of imported rice into the country.
According to FAS, the shift from rice to other crops due to low paddy prices will be more noticeable in the second half of this year.
The DA is targeting to achieve palay output of as much as 22.12 million metric tons (MT), equivalent to 13.51 million MT of rice. This would bring the country’s rice self-sufficiency to 93 percent from 87 percent last year.