DINGLE, Iloilo — The country continues to be rice sufficient, however, the challenge is how to bring to the market affordable supplies of the commodity, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said here Thursday.
Piñol visited Iloilo as the Departments of Agriculture (DA) and National Defense (DND) brought the TienDA para sa mga Bayani inside the Camp Adriano Hernandez here in Dingle, Iloilo.
Piñol said TienDA is the advocacy of his department to complete the commitment of the President Rodrigo Roa Duterte of making food affordable and available for all.
TienDA was first established inside military camps but there is a plan to expand to regional offices of DA.
The secretary has already instructed DA regional executive director for Western Visayas Remelyn Recoter to locate an area in the city where TienDA will be established.
“We really have to do this because even if we have harvested the record harvest of palay last year, the people could not feel the sufficient supply of rice in the market due to the high prices of rice,” he said.
He added that the buffer stock of DA towards the first quarter of 2018 was 2.7 million metric tons. At the end of the first quarter, the target surplus is 3 million metric tons.
He cited that the problem is not the supply, but the “supply system from the farm to the market”, the “layers and tiers of middlemen and traders who make money”.
The TienDA concept was copied from South Korea where farmers were organized and empowered so they will be the one to bring their products to the market.
With this, consumers could buy commodities at affordable price because there are no middlemen and traders, he said.
“This proves that if only we could limit the tiers and layers of middlemen and traders between the farm and the market or between the farmer and consumers, we could effectively bring down the price of basic food commodities,” he said.
Ideally, the price of rice should be double the buying price of palay, Piñol said
He was happy to note that there are rice stocks in Dingle that are being sold at PHP33 to PHP34 a kilo. In Metro Manila rice is sold at PHP60 per kilo.
Other goods available at the TienDA aside from rice are fresh vegetables and fruits, eggs, meat, and fish.
Meanwhile, Dingle Municipal Agriculturist Marfe Quinlat said the program is a welcome development because with the elimination of middlemen, the income would go direct to the farmers.
Michael Damasing, president of the Dingle Farmers Federation, said if the TienDA is sustained, then more farmers would be able to benefit.
The federation has 30 farmer-associations, composed of up to a thousand members.
He said that commodities are cheaper by PHP5 to PHP10 when compared with the market price. (Perla Lena/PNA)
