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By Ira Karen Apanay, Senior Reporter
The Department of Agriculture is asking Congress
to pass the National Food Authority (NFA) reform bill to further
boost farm productivity, raise rural incomes and help the government
achieve its food sufficiency goals in the medium term.
“The NFA reform bill is one of the seven
farm-friendly measures we are seeking congressional nod this
year—all to increase the incomes of small farmers and fisherfolk,
expand access to rural credit and protect the environment,”
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said.
Yap explained the Agriculture department is
lobbying Congress to green-light the NFA’s financial and corporate
restructuring so it could, among others, bankroll the development of
a multibillion-peso national grains highway.
“This envisioned grains highway will actually
be a logistics artery aimed at efficiently storing, processing, and
transporting food from production to consumption areas,” he said.
Secretary Yap said that fresh funding for this
proposed national grains highway will be used in part to repair and
upgrade nonfunctioning NFA warehouses nationwide for use by farmers
in 2,000 rice-cluster areas and 1,000 corn-cluster areas across the
country.
Besides the NFA reform bill, the Agriculture
department is also urging Congress to pass seven other farm-friendly
bills, which include the measure extending the Comprehensive
Agrarian Reform Program.
The proposed national grains highway will
directly link rice and corn production areas to major consumption
centers, as well as calamity and isolation-prone sites.
Yap said that as part of his grains highway
plan, the Agriculture department will also help farmers put up grain
silos or municipal grain centers near production areas, and set up
flatbed dryers.
He said these facilities will help pull down
prices of food staples such as rice and corn, considering that
prices of grain in the country remain high partly because of the
lack of uniform specifications for drying and storage of grain.
Yap said the development of the grains highway
will address pressing concerns over the inadequacy of post-harvest
facilities for farm produce, which has spawned inefficient practices
leading to high production losses by as much as 14.8 percent for
rice, 25 percent for corn and 20.6 percent for fruits and
vegetables.
A grains highway will also do away with
inefficient, costly and slow transport systems to move agricultural
products from production areas to selling centers, and to resolve
the problem of unstable food supply and prices in “unchartered”
areas and food-deficient communities.
Besides building silos and warehouses, Yap said
the grains highway system will include the construction of
cold-storage facilities and dust-control systems; the purchase of
dump trucks, rice mills, truck scales, stack conveyors, generators
and dehullers; and the repair of packaging machines, and flatbed and
mechanical dryers.
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