LAOAG CITY, Ilocos Norte (PIA) – Local farmers in Ilocos Norte are encouraged to sell their extra rice harvest to the National Food Authority (NFA) after the buying rate increased from P23.00 to P30.00 per kilo through the Price Range Scheme (PRICERS) program until April 29, Monday.
 
The PRICERS program is a result of the buffer stocking study conducted by the NFA Council to determine strategies on how to increase rice stock to be used in calamities.
 
“The NFA Council determined that to encourage more farmers to sell rice, we need to match the buying rate in the market for the traders,” NFA Ilocos Norte’s branch manager, Jonathan Corpuz, explained in an interview, yesterday.
 
The agency’s buying rate will change weekly, depending on the current local market price that week.
 
“We base our buying price with the market price in the province, so if the market value does not go down, our buying rate won’t go down also,” he added.
 
The price will vary weekly, depending on the current market value for local traders.
 
The rice being sold to the NFA needs to have a 90 percent purity rate and not have a moisture content lower than 14 percent.

To cover more towns, the NFA is currently conducting a Mobile Palay Procurement Program, where the agency visits farming towns and barangays to buy rice.
 
“We’re happy to report that when we implemented the increased buying rate last Monday, April 22, we already bought 6,288 sacks of rice. We are expecting that this will be continuous because a lot of towns have been requesting for us to go to their localities to conduct the mobile rice procurement,” the branch head said.
 
As of posting, the NFA has 6,492 bags of rice as buffer stock to be used in case of calamities.
The rice procurement program will run until the NFA Ilocos Norte reaches its target of 70,000 bags of rice for buffer stocking.
 
Interested farmers can contact the NFA Ilocos Norte through their hotline numbers 0916- 462-2578 and 770-4248 for concerns about the rice procurement program. (JCR/AMB/EJFG, PIA Ilocos Norte)