Special report: How a small Bohol town sells rice at P29/kilo

(First of three parts)

JAGNA, Bohol, Philippines —  Dawn has broken. It is Thursday, 5 a.m. and Elvira Allin is already up. For Jagnaanons like her, today is the day that they buy rice – at only P29 per kilo.

Allin, 60, is ecstatic even if she must traverse 21 kilometers of hilly slopes and rough roads in this municipality located 68 kilometers from Tagbilaran.

From Barangay Boctol, she hails a tricycle with three neighbors to reach Barangay Balili, where a small market fair is put up, selling food stocks at below-retail prices.

At the coast, the women workers of the Jagna Progressive Vendors Association (JAPVA) are pouring bangsi (flying fish), bangus (milkfish) and kitong (rabbit fish) in ice boxes. The fish come from across Bohol, but all of them are headed to one location: the covered court of Balili.

Rosana Mongaya, a member of JAPVA, picks up the ice box with her slight build, making every nerve in her arm pop up. She struggles to mount it onto the van headed to Balili, but she manages, reminding herself of what she could earn later in the day.

Upon arriving at the court at around 6 a.m., Mongaya and the other vendors unload the ice boxes one by one. Some of them set up tables where the fish are placed behind price tags – bangsi, P120/kilo; bangus, P210/kilo; kitong, P290/kilo.

Jagna, located on the southern coast of Bohol, is a bustling commercial trading center and port town.

Mongaya benefits from an initiative where the local government buys directly from fishermen to trim prices by cutting off the middlemen. JAPVA, made up of 25 women, is tasked with selling the fish to Jagnaanons and, in turn, earn P20 per kilo sold, which is split among them at the end of the day.

As the morning further progresses, Jagnaanons line up inside the court, eco bags hanging on their shoulders, waiting for the makeshift market to open. Here, P1,500 goes a long way: five kilos of rice, three kilos of pork, two kilos of fish and an assortment of vegetables.

Since February, Thursdays have become a habit for Jagnaanons to troop to the village where the local government sets up its buyback program – borne out of years of farmers and fishermen needing better pay and consumers wanting cheaper food.

The program sells rice at P29 per kilo, pork at P290 per kilo, beef at P395 per kilo and squash at P30 per kilo, significantly lower than the prevailing prices of rice, pork, beef and squash in Bohol and even below the national averages in April, based on Philippine Statistics Authority figures.

Rice averages P53 per kilo in Bohol and P50 per kilo nationwide; pork liempo is worth P383 per kilo in Bohol, P381 per kilo nationwide; a kilo of beef costs P476 per kilo in Bohol and fetches P432 per kilo at the national level; while squash costs P38 per kilo in Bohol and P41 per kilo nationwide.

Supply chain frailties

Jagna’s buyback program was not developed overnight. It traces its roots back to the pandemic era when fishermen and farmers suffered from low prices. They needed a market to sell their goods.

The local government intervened by sending trucks to pick up the farmers’ catch and produce. A makeshift market was created near the municipal hall manned by vendors tapped by the local government.

The goods were sold for lower than prevailing retail prices but above the amount that the farmers would get if they dealt with traders. In a few hours, the market sold out.

The scenario repeated in 2022, 2023 and 2024 – as more and more farmers needed help.

The solution conceived by the leadership of Jagna was to create a program that would be sustainable enough to purchase farmers’ goods regularly at a fair price and sell them at a more affordable price to consumers. That program began with a little bit of savings from the municipal hall.