Mindanaotoday.com |DA-10 rolls out fuel discount program for corn farmers in Bukidnon town
By: Joanne Olson
MANOLO FORTICH, Bukidnon – To cushion the impact of fuel price hikes on farmers and fishers in ensuring food security, the Department of Agriculture-10 (DA-10) officially launched the Fuel Discount Program for Corn Farmers at the Municipal Gym of of this town, June 3, 2022.
Carlene Collado, DA-10 regional executive director, said under the program, each qualified corn farmer is granted P3,000 in fuel discount as part of DA’s instituted measures with the constant increase of fuel prices which affects agricultural operations, thus maximizing the utilization of farm machineries and facilities.
Some 131 corn farmers from said town were the first batch of the fuel subsidy program-recipients throughout region 10, which were pooled from funds of the DA-Corn Program.
Pursuant to the Special Provision of the General Appropriations Act for the current fiscal year, a total amount of P500 million is apportioned to provide fuel discount to corn farmers, including that of fisherfolk for the machineries used in corn production from land preparation to postharvest activities and motorized boats for fishing operations.
For Northern Mindanao, the target is pegged at about 9,500 corn farmers with a total allocation of P28 million.
Richan Lacanaria, DA-10 corn focal person, said the subsidy shall only be used to buy gasoline or fuel diesel from accredited petroleum retail outlets.
To qualify for the fuel subsidy, he added, a corn farmer must be duly registered in the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA) and encoded in the Farmers and Fisherfolk Registry System (FFRS), and an individual or his/or farmer’s cooperative or association must also own functional machinery with proof of ownership and must be further listed in the Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Management Information System (ABEMIS).
Marymee Castro of the Aggies Multi-Purpose Cooperative of Barangay Maluko conveyed her appreciation for said assistance saying, “I am very thankful to DA because they were able to come up with this program that can really help us, farmers, because we are having a hard time, especially with the high prices of commodities today and the equipment that we are using for farming need fuel that can add in the production cost of the corn that we are planting.”
She added that the fuel subsidy will be used for their coop’s corn sheller, corn mill and other postharvest facilities.
Recognizing that most of the municipality’s fuel discount program-beneficiaries are farmer cooperatives, association-members, Carlota Madriaga, DA-10 regional technical director for operations, further urged the attending farmers to form into clusters in order to avail more agri interventions from the government, especially those big-ticket projects such as the provision of farm tractors, combine harvesters, solar dryer facilities, warehouses, among others.
Under the Duterte administration and Secretary Dar’s helm, she said the agri department is advocating for farm consolidation and clustering, as it involves the integration of government interventions to organized farmer-groups, with the aim to empower stakeholders to reduce production costs and reap benefits in the agri value chain. (JLO | DA-10)
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