Small Farmers Won't Be Planting Rice Soon
PHOTOS:
1) A new rice variety developed by IRRI; 2)Vietnam rice being unloaded from a cargo ship; 3)NFA Rice in a warehouse - what shortage?; 4)An IRRI Techie inspects her specimens; 5)An MF tractor my company sold to IRRI; 6)A farmer carrying seedlings on the way to the farm. (Photos courtesy of IRRI's Flickr site)
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I wrote this originally as a comment to Ellen's blog post entitled "Looming Fertilizer Shortage".
I was prompted by what I saw in the news last night. It was about a farmer who belongs to a group that plans to skip the next palay (rice) planting season. Though the focus of the news was only about the high cost of irrigation, I'm sure it's not the only reason they are doing so.
Seeds, the high end variety that is, I am told have been suspiciously missing since there are tons of Gloria’s “hybrid” variety rotting away in some NFA warehouse government is pushing Central Luzon farmers into buying. The natural course is that the regular seeds will demand higher prices OR they buy the cheaper but riskier hybrid which, when attacked by virus, kills wide tracts of palay-planted farms in a matter of days.
Next, irrigation. Farmers have been complaining about the cost of electricity used to pump water into their fields. At P9,000 per hectare, this amount reflects very high energy cost per hectare compared to our neighboring countries. Fuel price increases is one of the culprits here. Another is the incompetence of Napocor in managing its assets that is pushing maintenance costs sky-high thus, more expensive power.
We go now to fertilizers. Sulfur and pyrite (fool’s gold) are abundant but unmined. Sulfur mining in particular has been somewhat restrained after 9/11 since large volumes of sulfuric acid may be considered WMD. We have huge stocks of Nitrogen, Phosphate and Potassium. Especially phosphate, since we have the whole phosphate rock-island Republic of Nauru supplying us with the raw materials should our own resources get depleted. Hey, we have even convinced them to relocate in that building at the corner of Buendia and Makati Ave. should the 5,000-man island-nation sink down the Pacific due to over-quarrying. We have Joe Concepcion, as Cory’s Trade Secretary, to thank for (for once) for securing our phosphate supply for at least half a century. I don’t understand why we have a shortage in urea, though. Putting plastic containers in Bayani Fernando’s disgusting pink urinals all over the Metro would be enough to gather urea raw materials. I think.
Post-harvest. The same effects that the high cost of energy have on the service charge of paddy hullers, dryers, separators and polishers. I won’t be surprised farmers would go back to the primitive bilad-bayo-tahip method just to make a modest return. We can also include here the cost of renting hand-tractors or even just the cost of maintaining one, if they own it. Or cheaper still, get a carabao!
Ditto for transporting the crops.
What this all sums up to is a gi-mongous cost increase in rice production amidst a steady NFA buying price of P14.00.
The farmers won’t survive in this situation. I’ve just been to Subic the last weekend and judging by what I saw all throughout Bataan, Zambales, Pampanga and Bulacan, the farmers are in no hurry to prepare the soil for the May planting season. They’d probably wait for the rains before plowing and harrowing to save on tractor rental and irrigation cost.
Wow! We’ve just been teleported back to the 19th century!
(8~D)
Labels: Crisis, Farming, Images, Rice
posted by Tongue's Wrath @ 4/23/2008 09:38:00 AM
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