Senator Cynthia A. Villar on Sunday belied reports that imported rice are flooding the local market which is being blamed for adversely affected the income of Filipino farmers.
“That is a misconception,” said Villar, who chairs the Senate committee on food and agriculture, in a radio interview.
Villar, however, admitted that the price of rice is still high despite a lower inflation rate.
“Bumaba na ang inflation natin, imposibleng di bumaba ang presyo ng bigas,” said Villar as she also attributed the high cost of rice to the cartels.
She added that it was not the government which decided to liberalize the importation of rice, since the country signed an agreement in 1995 with World Trade Organization.
“They will allow us to control the importation of rice for 22 years to prepare our farmers to become competitive to the imported rice and this expired in 2017,” Villar said.
She said the agreement was with the WTO.
She added that since the president cannot but conform with the agreement, he sent a Rice Tariff bill to Congress, certifying it as urgent.”
She noted that the President does not want rice importation without tariff so the small farmers will not be hit.
She added that there is a need to help the farmers to become competitive with imported rice.
‘Unfortunately, the senator said, we failed to do, so we have to accept the importation of rice with tarriff.”
Meanwhile, Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan seeks to stop the unbridled conversion of agricultural land into residential, commercial, industrial, and other non-agricultural uses to ensure that Filipino farmers are able to produce food for the country,
Since agrarian reform was implemented in 1988 up to 2016, he said that almost 100,000 hectares of agricultural land (97,592.5 hectares) — or the combined size of Metro Manila and Cebu City — have not produced food, said Pangilinan in the explanatory note of his Senate Bill 256, or the Agricultural Land Conversion Ban Act.
“We need farmers to feed the country. Farmers need farm lands to feed the country,” he said.
Pangilinan said the rapid urbanization and population growth have contributed to the problem of shrinking agricultural lands.
“This measure aims to protect farm lands for which government already spent to irrigate,” he said, adding that his proposed bill seeks to preserve irrigated and irrigable lands for the country’s food security.
Data shows that Luzon suffers most from massive land conversion, making up 80.6% of the entire country’s approved land conversions; Visayas, 7.8%; and Mindanao, 11.6%.
The bill amends Section 20 of the Local Government Code, requiring additional approval from the Departments of Agriculture, Agrarian Reform, and Environment and Natural Resources, as well as local government units before land reclassification and conversion.
“This additional requirement before the grant of a conversion permit is to ensure the suitability of the conversion of an agriculture lot. This is timely due to the unbridled land conversion, legal or otherwise),” said the senator, who owns a small vegetable farm in Cavite.
He noted that studies show agriculture takes a back seat among other land development projects as it has the smallest return on investment.