Personally I know that my alma mater, University of the Philippines College of Agriculture (UPCA), now UP Los Baños, has not changed fertilizer recommendations since I was Freshman in 1959. So I graduated in 1965, haha, 2 years late – I was minding a girl more seriously than my studies. Then, I fell out of love while UP Los Baños stayed faithful to the chemical fertilizers with or without mentioning any organic fertilizer during classes.
UPCA was born in 1908. In other words, urea is an American prescription for Philippine agriculture that is 113 years old. Am I anti-American? No! Why do you think I have been blogging thousands of essays written in American English since 2005!
So I’m not surprised that PH Agriculture is fertilized by the chemical formula urea; so I’m not surprised either to learn that today, farmers are perhaps spending at least P1,800,000,000 (P1.8 Billion) yearly on urea.
But I’m surprised that a motley group of groups: seed growers, fertilizers, irrigators, fisheries, chicken, livestock, farmers, and millers, the Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (SINAG), according to a Department of Agriculture (DA) report[1], “(earlier) accused DA of overpricing” urea (Iris Gonzales, 03 July 2020, “FIAP Backs DA’s Free Fertilizer Distribution Program,” PhilStar).
SINAG, you forgot, when you point a finger at someone, 3 fingers are pointing at you.
Nonetheless, Ms Iris says President Michael Ardieta of the Fertilizer Industry Association of the Philippines (FIAP) “believes the department’s (DA’s) recent and ongoing centralized fertilizer bidding are ‘transparent and above-board’.”
Ardieta said the P1,000 per bag maximum bid set by DA “is fair and reflective of the average national retail price of urea in the country then, considering that it is delivered to municipalities and the definitely longer payment terms (that) the DA’s payment process demand.
When the DA centralized fertilizer bidding, many non/merchants lost their “earnings.”
Ted Cordero explains (24 June 2020, “DA’s Centralized Procurement Influenced Drop In Fertilizer Prices, Says Official,” GMA News). Why because, says DA Assistant Secretary & spokesman Noel Reyes, at the regional offices, different prices were winning: here P1,100, there P1,300, and elsewhere P1,500. With centralized bidding, the price went down to P1,000/bag. “That is the first time it happened,” Mr Dar said.
In 1864: “Don’t change horses in midstream” – US President Abraham Lincoln. In 2021: When Mr Dar changed horses, here’s my estimate of savings: roughly, each farmer at 2 bags for inbred rice or 3 bags for hybrid rice; for the 41,470 rice farmers who received free urea, the government spent from P4 million to P20 million less!
Computing farther, now then, from urea alone, considering only 1 million rice farmers, by centralized bidding, the DA can save the PH government from P100,000,000 (P100 million) to P500,000,000 (P500 million)! Yan ang tunay na SINAG – that’s a fabulous RING OF LIGHT!@517
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