Mindanao lawmaker seeks higher corn price

MANILA, Philippines – A congresswoman from Mindanao, which supplies more than 40 percent of the country’s corn requirements, is proposing an increase in the government’s buying price for corn from P7 to P13 per kilo.

“Through the National Food Authority, the government must increase its buying price for corn to push more farmers to cultivate the grain,” Cotabato Rep. Emmylou Talino-Mendoza said.

Her province is one of the biggest producers of the country’s second staple after rice.

“Assuring farmers a much higher buying price and greater potential income will provide them an incentive to invest in new implements and adopt inventive methods in order to quickly raise productivity,” she said.

“We really have to build up corn farming nationwide. This is the only way to ward off a menacing local shortage of the grain in the years ahead,” she added.

Talino-Mendoza earlier proposed the creation of a new institute that would serve as the core of all corn research and development activities to ensure that the country’s future corn requirements are adequately met.

The Cotabato lawmaker also pushed for improved disaster risk mitigation to reduce potential crop losses as a result of unfavorable climate changes – whether flooding or drought – associated with rapid global warming.

“As we have experienced in Cotabato, with unusually heavy rains, irrigation dams and rivers that sustain our farms can easily overflow and wipe out whole fields,” she said.

She said communities could help lessen the adverse impact of excessive rainfall and flooding by restoring watersheds destroyed by deforestation, clearing waterways and putting up additional water impoundment structures.

“Rainwater storage structures in homes and farms also enable us to save extra water that can be helpful during extremely dry months,” she added.