Western Visayas rice farmers received P27 million in fertilizer incentive grant from the National Food Authority in 2008 after selling 778,678 bags of palay to the agency, its figures show.

In Negros Occidental, incentives totaled P1.5 million given to 48 individual farmers and nine farmers’ cooperatives.

NFA provides an incentive of P1,800 is given to farmers or organizations for every 2,500 net kilos of palay they sell  to the NFA.

The additional incentive was given even before the start of the main harvest last year to encourage rice farmers to sell their produce to the NFA.

In the last five months, the NFA has paid farmers almost  P293 million as fertilizer incentive.

Administrator Jessup Navarro said in press release the fertilizer incentive helped in attaining a high percentage of the agency’s procurement target to augment its grains inventory.

From only 651,540 bags of palay bought in 2007, NFA’s palay procurement jumped to 13.2 million bags in 2008, equivalent to 8.7 million bags of rice.

At present, the NFA has 18.7 million bags of rice in its inventory.

In Central Luzon, farmers who sold a total of 2.6 million cavans of palay to NFA received the bulk of the fertilizer incentive at almost P75 million.

Southern Tagalog received P48 million in fertilizer incentive for selling 1.49 million bags while Cagayan Valley, with P34 million for one million bags.

Ilocos Region was granted P29 million for 802,752 bags; Bicol Region, P26 million for 803,113 bags; Central Mindanao, P24 million for 763,490 bags; and  Southern Mindanao, P13 million for 433,656 bags.*NLG

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