ABONO wants flood soaked palay sold at pre-typhoon prices

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

ROSALES – The chairman of the Abono Party-list wants those ready to harvest but flood soaked palay in Pangasinan dried at the palay and corn drying facilities and sold at the pre-Typhoon Lando prices.

A farmer checks a submerged rice field after heavy rains brought about by typhoon
 Lando inundated farms in a Luzon province. -- AFP

Engineer Rosendo So said that he would seek assistance to various offices and organizations to help the affected farmers on their dilemma.

“Despite being soaked by flood we want that their prices should be on the pre-typhoon stage. So what we are going to do is bring them to the drying facilities in Villasis and Alcala before they can sell their crops,” he stressed.

Those hundreds of millions of pesos twin corn and drying facilities in the two towns were flag ship projects of former Congressman Mark O. Cojuangco when he was the representative of the 5^th Congressional District.

The Abono chairman said he would intercede with traders to buy those dried palay at the price that would put the farmers not on the disadvantage.

To make that possible, So said, he needs the cooperation of the officials of the local government units like the Municipal Agricultural Officials (MAO) and the heads of the irrigation associations.

He wants that the farmers and the traders meet directly instead of middlemen dictating the prices on the farmers.

So said before howler Lando wreck havoc on the palay farms the dried "rumble" and round was P17 a kilo while long grain was P18 per kilo.

“Kasi before iyong bagyo ang wet na rumble nasa P14 iyong long grain nasa P15 ang pasa. Ang tuyo nasa P17 iyong ramble (Before Typhoon Lando the buying price for the wet palay was P14 a kilo while the long grain was P15 per kilo while the dried rumble was P17 a kilo)”.

He said he feared that up to 98, 000 to 100,000 hectares in the 170 thousand hectares of rice farm in Pangasinan  had been affected by the breaking wind and rampaging water brought by the typhoon.

“Kung hindi marecover iyong nababad 40% ang matatamaan doon (if they could not recover those wet palay, 40% of the 98,000 to 100,000 hectares would be affected),” he assessed.

The ideas of meeting the farmers, MAO, and irrigators association officials on this issue ensued after So saw the inaction of the provincial government on the plight of the farmers.

“Wala kasi ginagawa iyong provincial (government) doon sa procurement ng mga palay ng mga magsasaka. So naiisipan natin ime-meet natin ang mga magsasaka mamayang hapon mga irrigators saka mga municipal agriculturists to procure iyong mga wet palay nila (The provincial government neglected the farmer in interceding for the procurement of the crops. So we thought to meet the farmers, irrigators, and municipal agriculturists this afternoon how to market their wet palay)”.