SAN JOSE DE BUENAVISTA, Antique – The Department of Agriculture is eyeing to complete the release of the PHP21.18 million assistance for 4,237 farmers in Antique on Friday.

The recipients comprised the last batch of the 36,555 farmer-beneficiaries of the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund-Rice Farmers Financial Assistance (RCEF-RFFA) for 2023.

Antique Governor Rhodora J. Cadiao on Thursday said the release of financial assistance to the farmers would enable them to buy fertilizers and other inputs and alleviate their economic situation this lean month.

“A portion of the PHP5,000 assistance could also be used by the farmers to buy their needed sustenance as they wait for their harvest,” Cadiao said in an interview on Thursday.

August is considered a lean month because farmers do not harvest their first cropping until September. The first cropping period is from May to August.

Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Undersecretary Jonathan Tan, who joined the governor in the distribution, said there is a plan to extend the RCEF-RFFA until 2030 to continuously support small rice farmers owning two hectares and less.

“We encourage farmers to have themselves be registered with the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA) so that they could be included among the beneficiaries,” Tan said.

He said it is important for the farmers to be registered with the RSBSA to receive other assistance from the national government.

In the meantime, farmer beneficiary Denna Lucente, 48, from San Jose de Buenavista, said she no longer worries about where to get money to buy fertilizers and insecticides.

“The assistance is timely because right now we really need fertilizers and insecticides to be applied in our less than two-hectare farmland,” she said in an interview.

They already planted palay for the first cropping, and now is the time for them to apply fertilizers and insecticides.

She said with the timely application of fertilizers and insecticides, they are optimistic about better production and higher income. They earn PHP10,000 every cropping period.

Another recipient, Vicente Paconses, 68 years old, of Hamtic, said he would use the PHP5,000 to buy a hose that he could use to water his paddies.

“I need to buy a hose so that it would be easier for me to draw water from a deep well,” he said.

He said that his farm is in a sloppy, rain-fed area, and he uses a pump to water the paddies. (PNA,  Annabel Consuelo Petinglay)