Listen to IRRI, Loren tells government

In the face of the looming rice price volatility, it is best for the government to start instituting long-term programs that will "rekindle the farmers' confidence to plant more."

Senator Loren Legarda made the statement yesterday as she urged the government to heed the calls made by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) for developing countries to boost their investments to farm-related projects such as roads and irrigation.

"If the farmers are to intensify their efforts on the land they till, the government must do its share," said Loren.

Loren mentioned other concerns earlier cited by IRRI such as tight credit and declining rice prices that tend to discourage the farmers from planting more.

The chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Loren explained that farmers may not be as eager to use expensive fertilizers and other farm inputs due to financial constraints, a situation that would result to dwindling production.

Loren stressed that the government must look at the plight of the farmers, on whose productivity depends the country's food security in the immediate time and country's targeted rice sufficiency in 2010.

"The government must weigh in what IRRI has said if it intends to avert the so-called rice rice volatility," said Loren.

Loren also said tight credit as a threat to rice production must be specifically given attention by the government, specially in the face of rural banks collapsing one after the other.

"With more rural banks closing shops, farmers will find it more difficult to avail loans for their farms and farm inputs, hence the government must find ways to solve the problem," Loren said.

Loren also asked the government to give strong considerations to buying farmers' produce at reasonable price and not similar to the prices being dangled by middlemen to the farmers.

"If the government can spend millions of dollars in buying imported rice, it must also show our farmers that it is also ready to buy their produce at reasonable prices."

The Philippines, through the National Food Authority (NFA), bought a total of 650,000 metric tons equivalent to 13 million bags in 2008, paying the country's farmers P12 billion.

In 2007, it spent $494 million in buying 1.79 million metric tons of rice from abroad.

IRRI had earlier said that the world's food production has dramatically declined due to a number of factors, including climate change.

The Laguna-based institute that pioneered rice research in the early 60s also noted the growing industrialization of heretofore agricultural countries as one big reason in the decline in food production.

"These new countries because of their bid to keep pace with the challenges of technology, are fast-converting their agricultural lands to industrial sites, malls, and commercial areas, forgetting agriculture in the process," she said.