TAPPING THE POTENTIAL OF COLORED RICES
AT THE RECENT Negros Island Organic Farmers Festival in Bacolod City, the colored rice varieties—black, red, and brown—were among the most conspicuous at the market stalls. Most are organically grown, and they fetched high prices of R80 per kilo (kg) or thereabouts. Some were priced higher.
We were able to meet a number of growers as well as other stakeholders like a businessman who is trying to help small farmers with limited resources. Many of the rice farmers in Negros till just about a hectare each. Some have just a half hectare. But there are also others with bigger hectarage.
From what we saw and gathered, we realize there is much potential in producing colored rices, but there are also challenges that have to be addressed.
One of the more successful colored rice producers that we met is Julio Mirasol of Moises Padilla town. When he started planting organic colored rice in 2003, he planted only 3,000 square meters. From that area, he was able to harvest 39 sacks of palay weighing 45 kg each.
Most of the harvest was for home consumption, but if everything was milled and sold commercially, that would have given him a reasonable income. The milled rice was equivalent to 877.5 kg with a gross value of R70,200. Julio really loves to grow colored rice for his own good reasons. He is now devoting 6.8 hectares to rice consisting of separate parcels.
Last October he was able to harvest 105 cavans of black rice palay from 1.5 hectares. That yielded 55 cavans of milled rice (45 kg per cavan) for a total of 2,475 kg. At R80 per kilo, that’s a gross of R190,000 from 1.5 hectares.
How about the cost of producing colored organic rice? Well, Nicolas Narajos of Valladolid, who is currently converting his farm into an organic farm, gave us the answer. He explained that more or less, the value of inputs in organic rice production is about the same as that of the conventional chemical system of farming. But there is a big difference.
In conventional rice production using chemical inputs, he said that farmers usually apply R12,000 to R15,000 worth of chemical fertilizers per hectare. In the case of organic farmers, their fertilizers include vermicompost and other materials like fermented fruit juice, fish amino acid, and the like, which are
worth about the same. However, organics farmer practically do not have cash expenses for those things because they make these themselves.
Julio Mirasol notes, however, that all is not well when it comes to the production of colored rice by the small farmers who till just one half to one hectare. Most of the farmers would like to convert their palay into cash as soon as their crop is harvested. That’s because they need the cash for their family’s upkeep and to pay for their loans.
The small farmers now prefer to plant the conventional varieties using chemical fertilizers. Why? Because as soon as they harvest their palay, they can sell the same to traders right after threshing. They can’t do that with the colored rice because there are no buyers for their palay. If the small farmer has to mill the palay and sell the milled rice, it will take time. He will have to bring his rice to the market for sale. That will entail transport costs and he will not be sure if he could sell all his milled rice in the public market. Most of the people can’t afford rice that is R80 per kilo.