SAN JOSE DE BUENAVISTA, Antique – Traders are offering farmers between P22 and P24 per kilo from the previous month’s buying price of P12 to P14 for rice harvested before September to October.
“The harvest for the first cropping started only this August on almost 2,000 hectares of farmland,” said Nicolasito Calawag, Antique Office of the Provincial Agriculture (OPA) head.
The harvest peak will be next month until October.
But the towns of Barbaza, Belison, Bugasong, Culasi, Hamtic, Laua-an, Pandan, Patnongon, and Tibiao have early harvests this August because of the irrigation system.
“Farmers in the towns having an early harvest also planted fast-growing varieties such as RC 10 and 27 that only take 90 to 110 days from planting to harvesting,” Calawag said.
Antique has a total rice land area of 43,000 hectares.
Around 3,000 metric tons were harvested in 2022, which the OPA expects to match this year.
The province was rice self-sufficient last year, Calawag added.
“Antique is usually self-sufficient in rice, but because of free trade, we could not control rice traders to ship the production to other provinces,” Calawag said.
He said traders ship the rice to other provinces like Capiz, Negros Occidental and Cebu.
Calawag further said farmers in Antique consider rice a “cash crop,” prone to selling their harvest to traders whenever their need arises, like for their children’s school supplies this Aug. 29 school opening. (PNA)
