PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has signed a law that gives free irrigation to farmers who own land not larger than eight hectares.
Republic Act 10969 also condones the unpaid irrigation fees and the writing off of the loans of the farmers who own the same size of land.
“The state affirms its commitment to contribute to the lowering of the cost of production through the provision of free irrigation service, and further relieve the farmers and their irrigators associations from the burden and consequence of unpaid irrigation service fees,” says the law that Duterte signed on Feb. 2.
Senator Cynthia Villar, head of the Senate committee on food and agriculture and the principal author of the bill, said free irrigation wasone of the reforms needed to improve the competitiveness of the agriculture sector.
“With the lifting of the quantitative restriction on rice, imported rice will soon flood the market and it is very important that our local farmers’ produce will be able to compete by lowering the production cost,” Villar said.
She said free irrigation for small farmers was an appropriate response to the projection of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization that, in 2050, “small family farms and not the big corporate farms are the ones that will be depended on to provide food for the growing world population.”
Villar said as early as 2017, farmers had been getting free irrigation services with the inclusion in the 2017 General Appropriations Act of P2 billion and P2.6 billion in the 2018 GAA.
Senator JV Ejercito said the income of poor Filipino farmers were expected to increase and their economic condition were seen to improve after Duterte signed the new law.
“This is surely one of the crucial reforms in the agricultural sector. As one of the proponents of this measure, I laud the signing of RA 10969 granting free irrigation to farmers owning not more than 8 hectares of land,” Ejercito said in a statement.
Ejercito, the author of Senate Bill 1199 or the “Free Irrigation Services Act of 2016,” said the law was expected to lessen the “out-of- pocket” production expenses of farmers and boost their harvest because of enough water for their farms, which would increase their income.
“Our desire is to unburden our poor farmers from paying irrigation service fees. The law condones all unpaid irrigation fees and penalties of farmers who till the same size of land,” he said.
