The National Food Authority (NFA) is eyeing the procurement of 150,000 bags or 7,500 metric tons of palay (unhusked rice) from rice farmers in Negros Occidental this year.

As of Wednesday, the NFA-Negros Occidental has procured about 1,000 bags of palay from the available fund of PHP142 million since January.

Provincial manager Epifanio Jun Cosca said they are intensifying the agency’s palay procurement program to help Negrense farmers amid the volatile buying prices of palay.

“The NFA serves as the benchmark for farmers to choose where to sell their palay. We are here, ready to buy their produce once the market price among traders decreases,” he said.

Farmers can sell their clean and dry palay with 14 percent moisture content to the NFA at PHP19 per kilogram.

The surge in the volume of palay sold to the NFA is expected during the main cropping season from August to November.

In 2020, about 144,000 bags of palay were procured by NFA-Negros Occidental, which is higher than about 68,000 bags in 2019.

Cosca said that the bigger volume of palay procured last year was attributed to the effects of the rice tariffication law.

There has been an increase in supply, especially of imported rice, affecting local farmers as they also have more competitors, he noted.

“Once the supply increases, the demand drops. With the lower buying price of palay among traders last year, most local farmers opted to sell their harvests to the NFA,” Cosca said.

The current average buying price of palay among traders in the province is PHP16 per kilo for newly-harvested palay, not yet clean and dry.

Compared to the NFA’s PHP19 per kilo, there’s still a margin of about PHP1 to PHP2 as the operational cost for drying is about PHP4 to PHP5 per kilo.

Cosca said considering this, farmers now tend to sell their palay to the traders.

“Traders have to increase their buying prices to capture the produce of local rice farmers. There is the indirect intervention of the NFA to influence and stabilize the price of the commodity,” he added.

NFA-Negros Occidental has four warehouses located in the cities of Bacolod and San Carlos, and Ilog town utilized as palay-buying stations.

All these currently housing about 40,000 bags of palay and 20,000 bags of rice, which account for the province’s buffer stocks.

“Our role is now mainly focused on buffer stocking for calamities and emergencies, we no longer have the regulation function,” Cosca said. (PNA)