Sacks of palay at the NFA Warehouse in Occidental Mindoro

OCCIDENTAL MINDORO (UPDATED)  — Thousands of sacks of palay have been piled up and left unprocessed into rice in the warehouses of the National Food Authority (NFA) in San Jose, Occidental Mindoro, where they have been for over two years.

This is amid the Department of Agriculture's declaration of a food security emergency to control the high prices of rice.

Gemma Tabian, a farmer from San Jose town, said tillers do not know where to take their newly harvested rice, as the warehouses of the NFA are still full of unmilled palay.

"'Yung iba po nabulok,'yung iba po nabenta na ng mura, 'yung iba po halos hindi na ibinenta ng mga magsasaka... kinunsomo na lamang ng mga magsasaka” Tabian said in an interview with "Yan Tayo!" on Teleradyo Serbisyo in January.

(Some were left to rot or were sold for a lower price. Some farmers are hardly able to sell their palay, so they just keep it for their own consumption)

Tabian said that with a new harvest season, farmers had to find a way to let the DA central office know what was going on.

NFA San Jose Branch Manager Elimar Regindin admitted on "Yan Tayo!" over the weekend that their warehouses have 612,000 sacks of palay in storage but that only around 10,000 sacks of palay are two years old. The other sacks have only been there for around six months.

Assuming each sack has 50 kilograms of palay, that is at least 500,000 kilograms or 500 metric tons. 

“Mayroon din po tayo na 73,000 bags na local rice na na-mill natin noong nakaraang taon 2024 na mga palay. Ibig po sabihin nyan dahil po naggiling kami last year marami na po dito sa ating mga palay na ito ay nagiling na po o yung sinasabi po nila na mga luma na  " Regindin said.

(We were able to mill 73,000 bags of local rice last year. That means, because we milled rice last year, much of the palay has been milled and are in stock)

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Regindin also denied that they have palay stocks  in their  warehouses that have already started  rotting, saying stocks are inspected regularly.

According to Regindin, they have started bidding out milling contracts, but no millers have participated due to the 63% guaranteed milling recovery (GMR) mandated by law.

That means for every 100 sacks of palay, 63 sacks goes to the NFA. The miller gets the sacks in excess of that as well as byproducts of the milling process. 

"Pero yung darak po natin dito sa Occidental  Mindoro ay napakamura dahil nga po sa pandemya ng mga baboy kaya ang sabi po nila ay talagang nalulugi po talaga  ang mga miller po natin dito,” Regindin said

(But the prices of rice bran are low in Occidental Mindoro because of the African Swine Fever pandemic, so the millers said they would lose money on the deal).

Vice Governor Diana Apigo-Tayag has appealed to millers in the province to participate in the nexxt round of bidding.

Regindin has only been NFA branch manager for less than three months and said he also wants to find out why the palay was left unmilled.

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He added that if nobody bids for the milling contracts, there will be no space to store the unmilled palay from the new harvest.

At present, the NFA Occidental Mindoro can only accommodate a little over 141,000 sacks of palay.