DAR chief to traders: Stop shortchanging local farmers

DEPARTMENT of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Secretary John R. Castriciones on Wednesday lamented the sad plight of farmers who are being shortchanged by unscrupulous middlemen.

Warlito Ronquillo and his wife Maricel complained to Castriciones that traders are buying their tomatoes at P2 per kilogram. Instead of selling their tomatoes, the couple who are both agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARB) decided to just give away their produce to neighbors.

“That’s too much,” said Castriciones, expressing his disgust over the very low price offered to farmers who work hard cultivating their land and taking care of their farms.

Castriciones and DAR Undersecretary for Support Services Emily Padilla said they met with farmers to hear their pleas for help to fight off unscrupulous traders.

The official appealed to traders not to shortchange the farmers and ordered DAR officials to find ways to help farmers sell their products at a fair or reasonable price.

Castriciones clarified, however, that the DAR is not totally against the middlemen but only wanted them to be fair in their dealings with the farmers.

Warlito Ronquillo, chairman of the New Basuit Producers’ Cooperative (NBPC) based in Barangay Pala-pala, San Ildefonso, Bulacan, said selling their tomatoes is costlier: “The trucking service fee is much higher than the sales.”

Each of the 124 members of the NBPC own the farm they are tilling. The combined farming area covers 152 hectares, which are alternately being planted with rice and various kinds of vegetables.

The sad experience of the Ronquillo couple is a perennial problem among small farmers, Castriciones said.

To help small farmers, the DAR is implementing the Linking Smallholder Farmers to Markets and Microfinance, a value chain approach where farmers are encouraged to form themselves into a cohesive group with the end in view of pooling their harvests together to attain the needed volume that is required by an institution to which the DAR had linked up a farmers’ group to serve as a supplier of farm products for the institution’s daily consumption.

“This is the reason why we are encouraging our farmer-beneficiaries to join or form themselves into an organization because only then they can work together towards meeting the required volume their clients need,” Padilla said. “This is our way of helping our farmers by looking for marketing outlets for their products.”

Besides linking them to marketing outlets, Padilla said an organization of farmers is eligible for various forms of government assistance, which include easy access to credit, provision of farm implements and machineries and dump trucks, technology transfer and livelihood assistance.