DA offers 2 new incentives to boost rice harvest

The Department of Agriculture (DA) is offering two new incentive programs for agricultural extension workers and palay farmers to  boost harvests and beef up inventories of the National Food Authority (NFA) at the end of the wet or main  planting season.

The first program involves an increase in the monthly allowance of agricultural extension workers in Municipal Agricultural Offices (MAOs) to P2,000 as an incentive for them to work harder in providing extension services to farmers this wet crop and four more planting seasons covered by the DA’s two-year rice self-sufficiency program.

The DA had earlier worked out a new arrangement with the League of Provinces of the Philippines (LPP) wherein the devolved agricultural extension workers in local government units (LGUs) would  be assigned to the regional units of the DA for the five-harvest duration of its National Rice Self-Sufficiency Plan for 2008-2010.

With the bigger cash from the DA for travel allowances and other expenses, Agriculture Secretary Arthur  Yap is hopeful that the MAOs would aggressively help the DA bring new farming technologies to farmers and provide them with other rural extension work needed to increase the country’s per-hectare yields.

Agricultural workers were devolved from the DA to LGUs following the enactment of the Local Government Code in the 1990s.

 The second incentive is for farmers and covers a cash bonanza of P1,800 for every 50 cavans of palay that they sell to the NFA this wet harvest season at the recently adjusted palay support price of P17 a kilo.

President Arroyo ordered the NFA to increase its buying price to P17 from P12 last summer harvest season to increase the income of farmers and encourage them to plant more crops at a time of escalating production inputs and high food prices.

Yap told over 50 governors or their representatives during a recent meeting at a Quezon City hotel that the DA will be offering this incentive to farmers until such time that the NFA can buy 500,000 metric tons (MT) or 10 million bags from them during the main harvest season.

 The P1,800 bonus would allow farmers to buy one bag of petroleum-based fertilizer, the cost of which has doubled in a year’s time owing to the non-stop increase in oil prices in the world market.