Aggie NorMin pushes for programmatic agri grant under Masagana Rice dev’t program

 

Cagayan de Oro City – To optimize government assistance under the Masagana Rice Industry Development Program (MRIDP), the Department of Agriculture – Northern Mindanao Field Office (Aggie NorMin) espoused a programmatic grant of agricultural support to rice farmers in the region.

In an interagency consultative meeting Tuesday, July 15, Aggie NorMin convened the Landbank Lending Centers (LLC), Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC), Phillipine Crops Insurance, Corp. (PCIC), and government partner lending conduits to establish a harmonized framework for the provision of agri assistance to subsidize farmers’ production needs.

The framework is seen to negate overlapping and excessive government grants by employing a cross verification mechanism to determine the type and extent of agricultural assistance to be provided to the farmers, factoring in grants received from DA and its attached agencies.

Aggie NorMin Regional Executive Director, Jose Apollo Y. Pacamalan called for information sharing to facilitate complementation of the DA interventions and credit assistance of the LLC, and the ACPC.

Accordingly, he stressed that with the information of farmers’ production capacity, crops planted and planting schedule at hand, a collaborative workplan for the recovery of government’s credit investments can be feasibly devised.

The MRIDP is the core program of the DA geared toward revolutionizing the country’s rice industry to attain self-sufficiency.

Under the MRIDP, rice farmers receive farm inputs subsidy, financial assistance, mechanization equipment, postharvest facilities, and technical capacitation support from the DA.# (ATT)