The National Food Authority (NFA) will continue this year its massive palay (unmilled rice) procurement operations, to encourage more farmers to sell their produce to the food agency’s buying stations nationwide and to help stabilize prices.

In a statement, the NFA said that it plans to buy some 591,675 metric tons or 11.883 million bags of palay from farmers’ harvest in 2013, roughly the same target volume last year.

The grains agency fell short of its palay procurement target in 2012, with only 356,667 MT or 7.133 million bags of palay bought from farmers nationwide.

For 2012, the top three regions where the agency registered the highest procurement record are Southern Tagalog with 2.579 million bags; Central Luzon with 1.121 million bags and Cagayan Valley with 1.020 million bags.

To encourage local farmers to sell their produce to the grains agency, the NFA has introduced new procurement strategies—including the lending of empty sacks to farmers’ organizations using their cooperative development incentive funds; opening buying stations in far-flung areas; coordination with municipal agriculture office; surveying areas where harvesting is on-going and deploying mobile procurement teams in areas where farm prices are lower.

At present, the NFA buys clean and dry palay at P17 per kilo with additional incentives such as delivery fee of maximum P0.50/kg, drying fee of P0.20/kg and CDIF of P0.30/kg.