Rice bran found more expensive than main crop in Central Luzon

CITY OF MALOLOS, Philippines — Rice bran, a by-product in the milling of unhusked rice, commands a higher commercial price compared to the farm gate price of rice.

Piolito Santos, regional director of the National Food Authority in Central Luzon, said private traders in Central Luzon were found selling wholesale commercial rice bran, a major ingredient for animal feeds, at more than P15 a kilo compared to the P14-P15 farm gate prices of palay or unhusked rice.

On the other hand, Boy Mangulabnan a palay agent from Gapan, Nueva Ecija said private grain traders in the province are selling wholesale price of rice bran at an average of P15.50 a kilo while traders at the Intercity Industrial Estate in Bocaue, Bulacan said the feed ingredient is being sold at a wholesale price of P15.30-P15.50 a kilo.

Mangulabnan said private traders are procuring newly harvested rice crop at the average farm gate price of P14 a kilo while Santos said the farm gate price of newly harvested rice crop in Central Luzon ranges from P14-P15 a kilo.

Santos said the agency is procuring clean and dry palay at P20.70 per kilo if delivered by farmer’s cooperative members and P20.40 for individual farmers.

On the other hand, grain traders in Intercity Industrial Estate and in Nueva Ecija are buying clean and dry ordinary palay from P17-P20 per kilo depending on its quality while aromatic rice such as PSB RC 218 are priced at  P25-P26 per kilo.

This situation has led farmers to sell their produce to the NFA.

However, Mangulabnan noted that farmers have to wait from two to three days to have their rice crops weighed and procured by the NFA because of the long queue of farmers trying to sell their produce to the state-run grains agency.

Anselmo Sanchez, chairperson of the Bulacan Farmers Action Council, confirmed that all farmers in Bulacan prefer to sell their produce to the NFA because of its higher buying price than private traders.

Sanchez said the NFA could only procure around 10 percent of the farmers’ total produce, forcing them to sell their products to private traders at a lower price.

NFA’s high buying price leads to the fast overstocking of the staple grains in the NFA-owned warehouses in Central Luzon, Santos said.

He said farmers currently have more than 750,000 cavans of palay stocked in their warehouse plus more than one million of rice buffer stocks that add up to more than two million of palay and rice stocks.

“Although several of our warehouses are not yet filled to their capacities, the NFA has already rented seven private warehouses in Central Luzon, two in Nueva Ecija, two in Pampanga, two in Tarlac and one in Bulacan,” Santos said.

Since Central Luzon is the rice granary of the country, the national government is providing sufficient funds for the NFA palay procurement program, he said.