[ Manila Bulletin Online ] May 7, 2008
NTA spearheads stepped-up efforts to increase palay harvests
NARVACAN, Ilocos Sur — Some 5,000 hectares of tobacco farms are being eyed as additional areas for palay growing to help meet the rice requirements of tobacco farmers in line with the Arroyo administration’s accelerated efforts to increase palay harvest and mitigate the effect of a food crisis that is affecting the whole world.
The National Tobacco Administration (NTA) said the other day a 26,000-strong umbrella group of tobacco farmers led by the Philippine Association of Tobacco-Based Cooperatives (PATCO) and other industry stakeholders are ready to support an intensified palay production program of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in response to this global problem.
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap lauded the support of the major stakeholders in the tobacco industry-- cigarette manufacturers, tobacco buyers and exporters, redrying plant and trading center operators, contract growers or farmers -- for the department’s heightened moves to achieve record high in palay harvests and raise the national self-sufficiency level in rice from 92.38 percent this year to 98 percent in 2010.
Yap said that in the face of the global food problem, all sectors have to "act fast and work together" in stabilizing the supply and prices of rice and other food crops in the long term.
NTA Administrator Carlitos Encarnacion said that several tobacco companies, including wholesale leaf buyers Universal Leaf Philippines Inc. (ULPI) and Trans-Manila Inc. (TMI), have pledged to support the DA’s stepped-up rice-production initiative this year by committing additional areas for palay growing under the NTA’s existing tobacco-rice program.
Negotiations are in progress with other wholesale tobacco dealers, trading centers and redrying plant operators, Encarnacion said. "We expect the industry’s total coverage for palay production to reach 5,000 hectares."
This could translate into a production of 25,600 metric tons of palay, valued at R435.2 million or 16,640 metric tons of rice, he said, adding thish is enough to feed 60,000 tobacco farmers and their dependents plus 81,000 other people for one year.
In the past nine years, PATCO has participated in the Tobacco-Rice Program of the NTA, producing palay at a yield average of 5.2 metric tons (MT) per hectare using inbred seeds, Encarnacion said.
With complementary funding from the DA-attached Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC), Encarnacion said that NTA’s Tobacco "Rice Program will be expanded in the coming season to 1,250 hectares, assisting 2,500 farmer-cooperators.
He said that PATCO has requested for production assistance from the government, including a DA subsidy equivalent to one cavan of certified palay seeds per hectare of committed tobacco lands.
The expanded tobacco-rice program of the NTA, which targets an initial 1,250 hectares, aims to produce 6,400 MT of palay valued at P108.8 million, he said, or more than enough to meet the annual rice requirements of some 2,500 tobacco farmers and 15,000 of their dependents, which is equivalent to 2,723 MT combined.
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