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THE Department of Agriculture has started
distributing fertilizer discount coupons to farmers with palay (unhusked
rice) growers in Nueva Ecija and Pangasinan being the early
beneficiaries in Luzon of the joint fertilizer subsidy program
between the department and local government units (LGUs).
“We have launched this
innovative subsidy program in partnership with LGUs to help our
palay farmers cope with the spiraling cost of this vital input
across the globe, given that intervention measures like fertilizer
and seed support and irrigation maintenance are the vital cogs of
our two-year, five-harvest plan to raise the country’s
self-sufficiency rate from a projected 92.38 percent this year to at
least 98 percent in 2010,” Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said.
The Luzon farmers received their
discount coupons, worth P500, for fertilizer purchases. President
Gloria Arroyo and Yap simultaneously launched this subsidy program
earlier in Surigao del Sur and Cagayan de Oro City.
The distribution of the discount
coupons is in time for the wet or main cropping season for palay.
After the Mindanao trip with the
President last week, Yap flew to the Science City of Muñoz in Nueva
Ecija and Rosales, Pangasinan, to distribute two coupons worth P250
each to hundreds of farmers.
The Agriculture department said
the local governments are providing counterpart funds for the
subsidy program, which will help assure them of much higher yields
per hectare.
The cost of petrochemical
fertilizers has doubled from their year-ago levels as a result of
the nonstop escalation of oil prices in the world market.
He said that legitimate farmers
who are on the master lists of municipal agricultural offices are
qualified to receive the discount coupons, which they can then
surrender to accredited suppliers or dealers when they purchase
their fertilizer requirements.
These suppliers can then redeem
the discounted amounts from the department’s regional offices once
they surrender the coupons along with other requirements.
Yap said the Agriculture
department is pushing the fertilizer subsidy program, along with
other intervention measures, over the next five planting seasons to
help increase palay production from the record 16.24 million metric
tons (MT) in 2007 to 17.32 million MT this year, 18.55 million MT in
2009 and 19.77 million MT in 2010.
--Ira Karen Apanay
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