BY DOMINIQUE GABRIEL G. BAÑAGA
BACOLOD City – The United Sugar Producers Federation (UNIFED) in Negros Occidental has joined the call of other sugar groups and local officials for the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department of Agriculture (DA) to issue a price freeze in fertilizers.
UNIFED president Manuel Lamata said they have been appealing to DTI and DA since last year for a price cap or subsidy.
“When we first asked for help, the cost of urea fertilizer was already at P1,900 per 50-kilogram bag from the P800 to P900. Now, it is being sold at P2,300 to P2,400. With the onset of the planting season, many farmers may not be able to afford fertilizer and this will affect production in the next crop year,” Lamata said.
The sugar industry is composed of 85 percent small farmers and agrarian reform beneficiaries, said Lamata, and with the high price of fertilizer plus fuel and other agricultural inputs, they may not be able to survive another crop year.
He also finds it ironic that there are complaints about the high price of sugar “when it cannot even compensate with the high cost of all inputs we need to continue cultivating our sugar fields.”
“The DA and DTI have to move and address this before it gets out of hand,” Lamata said.
He also lamented the hike in oil prices which is a basic commodity in all aspects of sugar planting, from land preparation to milling.
Lamata said diesel prices were less than P30 per liter two years ago and now it breached the P50 per liter mark.
“How else can our small farmers survive when the price of fertilizers, fuel and other inputs is equal to or even more than the price of their produce? It is unacceptable and something has to be done. Worse is the inaction of the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) which should have addressed this before it reached this situation,” Lamata said.
Earlier, former SRA Board member Atty. Dino Yulo said the unabated increase in fertilizer cost despite their call for a freeze price increase is causing trouble to the sugar industry now that the milling season is already peaking and sugar planting has commenced in many areas.
Yulo said the prices of fertilizers have more than doubled compared to last year./PN
