By Ramon Jorge Sarabosing | www.inq7.net
RICE farmers in Prosperidad town, Agusan del Sur see a better future ahead.
For much too long, they fell prey to the seemingly never-ending cycle of debt-scheme arrangement from usurers and trader-financiers every planting season. With high interest rates, they end up with nothing during harvest time as deductions mount from fertilizers to emergencies.
But all that may change with the setting up of the Farm-Level Grains Center (FLGC), a project initiated by the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) for the implementation of Caraga Region’s food sufficiency project in cooperation with the local government unit (LGU) and funded by the Spanish government through Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional (Aceci).
The project included the construction and manning of technologically-advanced rice mills that also services palay buying, selling and deposit, and trucking to individual and cooperative groups of farmers within the area of reach.
“It has helped ease the financial burden of many of us who have to face human and natural challenges during the planting and harvest seasons,†said Edgar Tagaraw, 41, a member of the Gibong River Irrigators Multi-purpose Cooperative, an umbrella organization of nine farmer groups in the area.
With the FLGC, the farmers have been given the chance and option to sell their produce by a few centavos higher per kilo compared to those sold to private rice millers.
Comments are closed