San Miguel wants to buy rice directly from farmers, DA says

Food and beverage giant San Miguel Corp. has expressed its intention to take part in the government's planned communal farming system in which big companies may buy rice for their employees direct from the farmers, Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol said on Monday.

Piñol said this was relayed to the government by SMC president.

In a press briefing in Malacañang, Piñol admitted that the Philippine grains industry had been under the clutches of the traders, who control the buying proce of unmilled rice.

Without traders, Piñol said rice could be sold to consumers for as low as P32-P35 a kilo.

Rice prices now range from P35 to P45 a kilo.

“That’s how big the bite of the traders and the middlemen is to the income of the farmers and the buying price of the end-users. So if we could actually just make this intervention. And we are starting this actually," Piñol said.

"The President has already given his go-signal for the implementation of the corporate rice farming where we organize our rice farmers into cooperative and associations,” he added.

The Land Bank is expected to finance the farmers for them to get good seeds and fertilizers. Then, the DA will link them directly to the corporate buyers.

“In fact, next week when I come back from a trip abroad, we will already meet with the captains of industries because there are corporations now who would like to exercise their social—social—corporate social responsibility, CSR," Piñol said.

"And they are saying that, San Miguel, for example, San Miguel Corporation, I talked to Mr. Ramon Ang and he said, ‘We would like to buy directly from the farmers para mawala na ‘yung traders.’ Iyong supply nila sa mga empleyado nila. And so we are encouraging other corporations to do the same thing,” he added.

Piñol said the concept was the same as what the late former dictator Ferdinand Marcos did during his time when he ordered corporations to plant rice for their employees.

Aside from corporations, Piñol is also proposing the same system for the Department of Social Welfare and Development for their Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and to the Department of National Defense for soldiers who are entitled to receive rice allowance every month.

“That’s a lot of customers for the Filipino rice farmers,” Piñol said. —NB, GMA News