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Soaring fertilizer prices, imports threaten food security: Confed

“Farmers need help from the government to address soaring costs of production.”

The call was issued by Raymond Montinola, Confederation of Sugarcane Planters’ Associations national president, following a CONFED board meeting in Bacolod City on Thursday, November 11.
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“The cost of Urea and other fertilizers have gone beyond affordable levels, especially for our small farmers,” Montinola explained, adding that “with urea at Php2,000 per bag, our farmers will most likely reduce their inputs, leading to sudden drops in production.”

“We are not talking only about sugarcane growers, but also about rice and other farmers who depend on fertilizers to maintain their production,” Montinola said in a press release.

This development would constitute a serious threat to the country’s quest for food security and will again push the government to resort to massive food importations, he said.

“Unmitigated and untimely food imports have proven time and again to be ruinous to our farmers,” Montinola said.

“Food imports are okay when absolutely necessary, but experience tells us that this always hurts the Filipino farmer,” he added.

“We appeal to the government,” he added, “to look for real solutions to food security other than just imports. We will do our share in finding appropriate alternatives, but we want to see the government working with us, not against us.”

CONFED is calling on the government to find ways to provide Filipinos with available, affordable and safe food that is locally produced, Montinola said, emphasizing that the best way is to make Filipino farmers competitive, efficient and productive.

The CONFED board had earlier discussed concerns over rapidly rising costs of sugarcane production on top of other challenges confronting the industry, which are currently being addressed by a technical group reviewing the prescriptions and recommendations of the Sugar Road Map.

During the meeting, the group also discussed the government’s announced plan to institute a “sugar import quota”, a proposal apparently pushed by industrial users for government to allow the importation of their refined sugar requirements.

“Imported sugar may be cheaper now,” Montinola explained, “but the government must be aware that these imports, first of all, are subsidized and do not reflect real production costs.”

The CONFED president warned against over-dependence on subsidized imports that would hurt local farmers.

“It’s good while subsidized food commodities are still available, but what if they are no longer available or cheap?” he asked, pointing out the possibility that “we may no longer have local farmers who can produce our own food if we kill them with cheap subsidized imports.”

“We remain firm in our stand that sugar imports must be done in a calibrated and timely manner,” Montinola said, “based on hard data covering validated supply and demand projections.*

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