Farmers can now get greater income in selling their palay to the Department of Agriculture’s National Food Authority (NFA).
In a recent forum in Koronadal City, Dianne Silva, the newly-installed NFA XII regional director, said that farmers should now start to patronize the new incentive program of the agency.
“We buy palay at P17.00 per kilo, and with our new incentive program, farmers can get an additional P3.00 if they sell their produce to us,” the lady director said.
She added that farmers can gain more with the P20.00 (per kilo) from NFA compared to the buying scheme offered by rice traders, wherein they are sometimes taken advantage of.
At present, there were already a lot of farmers and farmer groups who opted to sell their produce to NFA rather than selling to rice traders.
Director Silva said that these farmers were hesitant before, but when they tried to deliver to NFA, they are now positive of the incentive program.
This new program of NFA aims to offer farmers to gain additional income and help the agency in securing available and enough food during calamities through buffer stocking.
If an individual farmer will deliver and sell to the NFA, he will get P3.00 per kilo as a buffer stocking incentive. He can also avail of 20 centavos per kilo as delivery incentive. Another 20 centavos per kilo will be given for the drying fee.
The same incentive can also be availed of by farmers’ associations (FAs) and cooperatives. However, 30 centavos per kilo will be added as their cooperative development incentive fee.
“Individual farmers can earn P20.40 per kilo while coops and FAs can get P20.70 per kilo if they will deliver to NFA,” Director Silva summed up.
Individual farmers or walk-in clients are allowed to sell 200 bags as long as they will secure a barangay certification.
They are also allowed to sell up to 700 bags, if they own at least five hectares, but they need to present their land title and they need to secure their passbook as their payment will be through bank transaction.
Coops and FAs, on their delivery, they must have their board resolution and the list of their members.
“We trimmed down the number of requirements for farmers to immediately receive their payment… for individual farmer, we immediately pay them upon delivery,” she added.
She also said that this new incentive program of NFA was conceptualized by Secretary Emmanuel Piñol to encourage farmers to choose the agency as their trading partner over rice traders.
For now, NFA XII is encouraging farmers to deliver, as much as possible, dry palay to them because of their limited drying facilities.
On the other hand, they guaranteed the public that they have enough warehouses to cater to additional buffer stocks.
NFA XII’s warehouses have a capacity of more than 1,658,000 bags. As of January 2019, they have available spaces for over 1,500,000 bags. (Carl Ulysses Aguillon- DA RFO XII)
