BACOLOD City – Farmers in Bago City, the top rice-producers in Negros Occidental province and Western Visayas, received P21.39 million in aid under the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) – Rice Farmers Financial Assistance program.
Each of the 4,279 recipients from all 24 barangays in the city received P5,000.
Marvin John Blance, city agriculturist-designate, said the assistance was for farmers cultivating an area of two hectares or less.
“This will help augment their income affected by the implementation of the Rice Tariffication Law. They cannot compete with imported rice, and one way to help them is to give them financial assistance,” he added.
All the eligible farmers have been enrolled in the national government’s Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture.
Farmer-beneficiaries Wilfredo Sebuan and Gina Regalado said the cash aid could help them not only in farming but also in other expenses, as their income has also been affected by losses brought by hog deaths that hit many backyard swine raisers in the city.
“I’m glad to receive the assistance. It has been hard financially for us. My pigs also died,” Sebuan said in the local dialect.
Regalado said she would mainly use the aid to buy farm inputs for the current planting season.
“This is a big help in times of calamity, not only for our rice farm but also for other needs because our animals were also affected,” she added.
Bago, located just south of Bacolod, produces more than 30 percent of the rice supply of Negros Occidental and is considered the rice granary of the province.
The city, which has a rice sufficiency level of 200 percent, recorded an average rice production output of 4.2 metric tons per hectare in 2022, according to the Office of the City Agriculturist. (PNA)/PN
