NFA assures enough rice this year
LINGAYEN–Pangasinan has sufficient stocks of rice to meet the local demand for the whole of 2011, according to the National Food Authority (NFA).
NFA provincial manager for western Pangasinan, Ramon Cuaresma, said his office currently has 650,000 bags of rice in reserve.
The western Pangasinan branch of the NFA covers the first, second, third and fourth districts of Pangasinan. The agency’s eastern Pangasinan branch covers the fifth and sixth district.
Cuaresma said the 650,000 bags available is composed of 100,000 bags now stocked in different warehouses of the NFA plus an additional 550,000 bags will be obtained once the 870,000 bags of palay it had bought from farmers last year are milled.
Hi office is also counting on the expected 80,000 bags of palay to be bought from farmers at the end of the first quarter of this year, which is still part of the regular palay season.
He said additional palay buying operations will be undertaken beginning March when most of the farmers start to harvest their second rice crop.
At the same time, NFA currently has a 43-day rice stock to date, which is higher than the authorized 30-day buffer stock.
Cuaresma said the daily rice consumption of the people of western Pangasinan is pegged at 15,000 bags a day.
He is also optimistic that rice importation this year will be significantly reduced with the increased volume of palay being bought by NFA from farmers
This was made possible, he said, by the sufficient rains that poured last year, enabling farmers to plant additional cropping after the first cropping.—LM
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