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[av_heading heading=’Women farmers hit land use conversion’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=’30’ subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’18’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”][/av_heading]
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Monday, March 5, 2018
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ILOILO – Peasant mothers scored the conversion of thousands of hectares of prime irrigated agricultural lands as a threat to rice supply.
The peasant groups Pamanggas and Amihan Panay, together with farmers from Oton, San Miguel, Pavia, and Santa Barbara towns affected by massive land use conversion, held a picket in front of the Provincial Agrarian Reform Office (PARO) Iloilo recently and took to task the office for its alleged inaction over several cases of “premature” and/or “illegal” conversion of prime agricultural lands done by big real-estate developers.
They demanded the government to stop the land use conversion (LUC) undertaken in their hometowns. The protesters also called the government to support the local rice production and not rice importation.
Aggressive land conversions are being undertaken by real estate developers in the towns of Oton, San Miguel, Pavia, and Santa Barbara.
These lands are mostly rice fields being converted to residential subdivisions.
In a related development, local outlet sellers of National Food Authority (NFA) rice are beginning to feel the impact of the shortage of the government-regulated supply, with non-NFA merchants seeing a spike in the prices of local rice.
Catalino Gabito, a 77-year-old rice vendor and an outlet seller of NFA rice at the Iloilo Central Market, told Panay News they have a very limited supply of (NFA) rice; they were allotted only five sacks rice due to a shortage in the national supply.
“Sila wala bugas to, wala unod ang bodega. Te amu na gin-limit nila nga lima lang ka sako ang makuha namon nga mga retailers,” Gabito said.
The NFA sells regular milled rice (RMR) at P27 per kilogram and well-milled rice (WMR) at P32 per kg as part of its food security and stabilization functions.
According to NFA administrator Jason Aquino, as early as November 2017, there was already a discussion on the request of the NFA to import additional 350,000 metric tons of rice.
The NFA is required to have at least 15-day buffer stock at any given time and 30-day buffer stock during lean seasons, which is usually from July to September./PN
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