BONTOC, Mountain Province (PIA) — Residents belonging to the vulnerable sector such as Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program beneficiaries, senior citizens, solo parents and persons with special needs in the province are benefitting from the P29/kilo rice under the Farming Support Services Program (FSSP) or contract farming program of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA).
NIA Mountain Province on February 24, 2025, started selling the Bagong Bayaning Magsasaka rice from the Province of Apayao, which is one of the two pilot provinces of the program in the Cordillera region.
About 500 bags of the P29/kg rice packed at 10 kg per bag were made available for the vulnerable groups. An individual can only avail of one bag.
“Diayay first implementation tayu ditoy Contract Farming, Kalinga ken Apayao paylang ti kasla nga pilot areas nga naimplementaan na, sunga swerte tayu ta uray nu awan kenyatayo [jai programa], nagbingay da ta maramanan met ti taga Mountain Province, ” said NIA Provincial Head Winston A. Daoas.
[For the first implementation of the contract farming program, Kalinga and Apayao are the pilot areas , and we are lucky that even though we are not part of the program, they shared to us in Mountain Province.]
Senior citizens Reginald Layogan and Fania Changiwan expressed their gratitude to the government especially to NIA for the program. They shared that through the program, they can now avail of cheaper rice that can help not only them but their families as well.
Daoas is hopeful for the inclusion of an irrigators association(IA) in the municipality of in Paracelis in the said program.
Under the FSSP, NIA provides to a qualified IAs P50,000 worth of farm inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides, as well as financial assistance for land preparation and harvesting per hectare during a particular cropping season. Five metric tons of fresh palay produce are directly purchased by NIA which will be milled and sold at P29/kilo.
Aside from the assisting the farmers in the value chain process, the program also aims to support the current administration’s goal of food sufficiency in the country. (JDP/VJLT – PIA-CAR, Mountain Province)
