{"id":238075,"date":"2019-11-22T01:44:45","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T06:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=238075"},"modified":"2019-11-22T01:44:45","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T06:44:45","slug":"excess-rice-better-than-shortage-duterte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/11\/22\/excess-rice-better-than-shortage-duterte\/","title":{"rendered":"Excess rice better than shortage: Duterte"},"content":{"rendered":"
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He said he is willing to let the government, particularly the National Food Authority (NFA), spend billions of pesos to buy more palay (unhusked rice) from farmers to improve their plight. (Pixabay photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA<\/strong>\u00a0— President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday said it is better to have a warehouse filled with excess rice than a shortage where people starve and farmers are at the losing end.<\/p>\n

Duterte made this remark after he asked Agriculture Secretary William Dar and the Congress to \u201cappropriate money\u201d to buy rice from local farmers on Nov. 19.<\/p>\n

\u201cSabi ko para walang gulo, sabi ko kay<\/em>\u00a0Dar,\u00a0bilhin mo lahat. Kung mataas ang presyo kes<\/em>a imported rice,\u00a0bilhin mo. Ngayon, kunin mo lahat, lagay mo sa bodega natin. Ang mangyari mag-sobra sobra ating bigas<\/em>\u00a0(I said so to avoid chaos, I told Dar to buy all the rice. Even if it costs more than imported rice, buy them. Now, get them, place them in the warehouse. What\u2019s going to happen is we\u2019ll have an excess of rice),\u201d Duterte said during the launch of the Elderly Program Center in Taguig City.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what\u2019s the problem.\u00a0Kainin man niyo \u2018yan<\/em>\u00a0(You\u2019re going to eat them all eventually).\u00a0Tutal<\/em>\u00a024 hours a day, 365 days a year,\u00a0kumakain tayo lahat<\/em>\u00a0(we all eat rice),\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

He said he is willing to let the government, particularly the National Food Authority (NFA), spend billions of pesos to buy more palay (unhusked rice) from farmers to improve their plight.<\/p>\n

\u201cNgayon\u00a0kung mas mahal ang kanilang presyo, binili ni<\/em>\u00a0Dar.\u00a0Eh di nalugi ang gobyerno kasi bumili ng maha<\/em>l. So\u00a0lugi tayo. Magkano? Siguro mga<\/em>\u00a0PHP2 billion.\u00a0Eh di lugi<\/em>\u00a0(Now if it costs more, then Dar will buy them. If the government incurs losses from buying them so be it. How much will we be losing? 2 billion.So be it),\u201d Duterte said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAng mga<\/em>\u00a0producers\u00a0napaligaya natin at ang binayaran na lang natin<\/em>\u00a0(At least we will be making the producers happy and we will be paying them),\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Dar said Duterte has directed the NFA to accelerate the turnover of its inventory by buying more\u00a0palay<\/em>\u00a0and selling more regular milled rice at an average of 20,000 50-kilogram bags of rice per day.<\/p>\n

He said the President also ordered to extend the unconditional cash transfer for small farmers affected by low\u00a0palay<\/em>\u00a0prices from one to two years.<\/p>\n

A total of PHP3 billion will be allocated for cash transfer extension that will benefit 600,000 farmers tilling one-half to two hectares of rice land every year.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u00a0— President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday said it is better to have a warehouse filled with excess rice than a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":174698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","mauthors-azer-parrocha","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238076,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238075\/revisions\/238076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}