I had the opportunity to watch a friend operate her rice business. She owns  hectares of land grown with rice and she co-owns a couple of hectares with other farmers as well. I watched her bargain with a farmer about buying their unmilled rice and drying and milling the rice herself and selling it through her thriving store here in rural Misamis Oriental.

It is really amazing watching her actively bargaining the purchase from P11/kg to P10/kgs of unmilled rice. According to her, one sack of unmilled rice would net her 10-15 kgs of rice which is currently still sold at a thundering P35/kg here. The price of rice has gone down a bit from P46/kg. From where am at, I guessed that she must be profiting P20-25 per kilo of rice. Not bad!!!

I asked her how she manages her farms and she said as usual the key is finding a reliable and trust worthy farmer-overseer. Having worked with a huge production farm in Negros years ago, I had more or less some understanding on land preparation needed for rice production. What I lack right now is land. My friend actually asked me if I am interested in financing some farmers in our area, since most farmers here have problem with money to start seeding, planting to fertilization of their rice. Not mention, harvesting, drying and threshing of rice during harvest season… I asked her how much it would cost to do so. She quickly whipped her calculator out and said more or less P2,000 for 2 square paddies and that usually yields to 30 sacks of unmilled rice, which would in turn yield 12-15 sacks of 50kgs of rice. At the current price of P35 let’s say, gets P1750/sack. In total she’d get P26,250 total for 15 sacks of rice.

I am interested in co-sharing or financing rice production with some of the growers here. I do have P5,000-10,000 to pay around with and with P2,000 or more for a couple of paddies which would yield P20,000 or more… that is actually NOT so bad at all. The thing with rice production is it is labor intensive. Like for example, land preparation and planting would take a couple of days and a couple of people. Not to mention the one week of drying period before the rice is milled.

I asked my friend how she pays her farmers and she said she pays them with rice also. Sharing usually goes 60-20-20. 60 for the financier, and 20 to the farmer and another 20 for the rest who helped with the planting and fertilization. But mostly, these other farmers needed more cash and they end up selling their share to her also.

Not bad at all… Now if only I could find a farmer who needed a financier soon…

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In our neighborhood sari-sari store, the sot of rice is now P46 per kilo. Never in my life have I seen the price of rice this high. I have heard that the National Food Authority (NFA) is already selling cheaper rice at P36 per kilo according to my neighbor. But why is this rice cheaper?

One of my relatives said that the NFA rice is no good… that eating it gives you stomachache and headache. When did eating cheaper goods the cause of tummy ache, I wonder. My father suggested that the cheaper rice were imported from the US where GMO rice are grown. He surmissed that the rice were “treated” with more chemicals than locally grown rice, perhaps why some people are experiencing some symptoms of headache and stomachache.

Do you think there is any truth in all of this?

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The price of rice in my next door sari-sari store has increase again. From P44 to P46 per kilo. Though I do not buy rice by the kilo, I am very much aware with the daily increase of the price of rice. What has happened? My friend at the Department of Agriculture swear there isn’t any shortage of rice in the country and that the cause of the increase is that rice all over the world is simply increasing. Well… might be true. Everything else is increasing. Look at the prices of canned goods and gasoline! I weep every time my family heads for the city. My Dad’s old car guzzles gasoline too much, well that is another post… but anyway, the price of unleaded gasoline today was P49. Imagine that…

I cannot believe we are importing rice from Vietnam and even the US. What happened to us? I remember when I was in grade school, Luzon was the “rice grannery of the Philippines.” What happened? According to the source above, our rice import has increased by 28% compared to last year. How can we be self-sufficient when our own farmers are not being aided by the government? Who are we helping? The economy of Vietnam and Thailand? Our government is projecting a 98% rice self-sufficiency by 2010… I echo willy Marbella, the KMP deputy secretary general, “Yap must be dreaming.”