Marcos to DA: Study building silos for rice, corn stock

President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. has directed agriculture officials to study the feasibility of the proposal to set up silos to guarantee a 30-day buffer stock of rice and corn in the country.

During a meeting with the Private Sector Advisory Council (PSAC) on agriculture on Thursday, the President, who serves as Agriculture chief, tasked Department of Agriculture (DA) Undersecretary Drusila Bayate and National Food Authority (NFA) Administrator Roderico Bioco to look into the feasibility and efficiency of building rice and corn stations modules using a mother-daughter or Hub and Spoke system.

“We should really look into it because it’s a successful program,” Marcos said. saying that using rice stations and modules have been a preferred solution in other countries to ensure an adequate buffer stock of rice and other produce.  

The PSAC suggested that building mother-daughter stations for rice and corn storage across the country would complement the administration’s Food Security Infrastructure Modernization Plan to ensure sufficient stock and stable prices of rice and corn.

In the proposal, a total of 30 mother stations will be built across the country wherein each mother station will have ten daughter station modules, which will be established in a 30-kilometer radius away from the main station. 

The stations will serve as a storage for rice and corn for buffer stocking for 30 days at any given time.

According to Aileen Christel Ongkauko, head of the PSAC Agriculture group, the system has been used by other countries such as China, the United States, and India.

She said the project could be under a public-private partnership scheme as each mother station may cost P5.7 billion each or a total of P170 billion.

Bioco, meanwhile, said the NFA would transition to providing physical rice stock from granting cash assistance to poor households under the government’s welfare program.

“There has been an endeavor before to make this physical but NFA has not been able to transition to that physical stock and this is where we’re going to change as part of our transformation from that, when we buffer, we actually buffer for the poor,” Bioco told the President.

Bioco said the Philippine government has more than P35 billion budget for rice procurement.

The NFA official said the target is to supply poor households with physical rice so that they do not have to go to the market to buy rice, which, in the end, will put "less pressure on rice prices."

“If we switch to that also Mr. President, what we hope to achieve is that quantitative easing in prices of rice… supply the bottom 18% of our society, take that away from the market then we can put lesser pressure on prices, especially during the lean season,” he said.

“So, that’s why traditionally, NFA is supposed to have a 30-day buffer stock before the lean season. It was easier because you just import but now we have to procure palay nine months earlier,” he added.

Marcos said he was glad about the reforms and transformation being done by the NFA, which is mandated to maintain the optimal level of buffer stock across the country.

“I’m happy to see that NFA is returning to its original function in trying to even out the price of rice, making it stable all throughout harvest and then the planting cycle,” Marcos said.

Other recommendations forwarded by the PSAC Agriculture group were the giving of long-term permit of 25 years for the Fishpond Lease Agreements (FLAs); development of a national policy that will guide and encourage local government units to provide long-term permits on exclusive areas for aquaculture operators for at least ten years for new developments and five-to-seven years for existing farming areas; and, the issuance of clear policy as regards delineation areas for commercial fishing.—LDF, GMA Integrated News