What comes first, the chicken or the corn?
Government should listen to
industry experts in crafting policy reforms.
Aside from rice farmers and millers, the local chicken industry
also bore the brunt of a series of government interventions last year geared to
arrest runaway inflation. The Department of Trade and Industry asked industry
players to lower farm gate prices of poultry products then, only to be
surprised when the Department of Agriculture lifted the special safeguard duty
on the importation of mechanically deboned meat.
The
result was thus doubly disastrous for local producers as farm gate prices of
chicken in some areas reached a low of P38 and P90 per kilo in some public
markets. These numbers, as they fall way below the local cost-to-produce,
understandably dealt local farmers with huge losses, unable to compete with the
deluge of imports.
Months
into something so unsustainable, it is little wonder then the local chicken
industry is practically pushed to the brink of collapse. According to data from
the National Meat Inspection Service, dressed chicken inventory is at 33,655
metric tons, up almost 50 percent. More than half, or almost 20,000 MT were
imported while the remaining 13,748 MT were locally produced.
In
the same way then that the implementation of the rice tariffication law led to
the closure of many local rice millers, the unabated deluge of imports in the
local market is threatening to strangle the local poultry industry due to tough
competition.
United
Broiler Raisers Association president Elias Inciong warned that small and
medium scale producers might be pushed to just import to align with what seems
to be the government priority. “We’ve tried for decades to convince the
government that imports do not benefit the consumers, but they do not believe
us,” he said.
The
irony is that while farm gate price is now at P80 per kilogram from as high as
P114 per kilo in June, retail prices have not followed suit, reaching between
P150 and P170 per kilo even amid fluctuations. If the virtual deregulation of
the industry had not brought the kind of relief it was envisioned to, something
is clearly amiss.
Inciong
explained: “There is a notion that importation benefits the consumers, but it
doesn’t. It is our position from the beginning that importation of poultry
products and most agricultural products have not benefitted the consumers,
especially the ordinary ones.”
Whatever
additional profit traders amass, they don’t pass it on the consumers, which was
the entire point of the government intervention. Worse, it forces local
producers out of business as they continue to bleed from massive losses. The status
quo has no regulations in place for traders, the only sector that stands to
benefit from the lowered tariff for chicken.
“The
priority will be the importers and that’s the reality of things,” Inciong said.
“Whether or not the consumers benefit, whether or not the producers are harmed,
we are irrelevant. It is just a matter of revenue generation for the
government.”
Far
from an industry-specific crisis, the predicament of the local poultry industry
has some dire overarching consequences. For starters, some 8.3-million jobs
depend on the industry, and so its collapse will impact millions of Filipino
households.
It
can also spiral into a serious national security concern that affects a major
food resource of the country. The price competition between domestic and
imported chicken might lead to the lowering of the price of domestic chicken
just to compete. Unable to do so, the next to be compromised might be domestic
production.
Declining
market share of domestic production and therefore declining profits for the
industry can set off a domino effect—reaching even local farmers of corn and
rice and small to medium scale feed millers.
For
instance, the adjacent feed milling industry will necessarily have to adjust to
whatever state the local poultry industry finds itself in. While it can be
expected to continue to support local farmers, they should be aided properly to
ensure quality harvests that can pass the quality requirements for feed
ingredients.
An
added complication is that the local feed millers also have to compete with
other industries buying locally sourced corn, whereas traders mostly but the
local harvest and sell it to feed millers at a higher price. As corn
constitutes about half of the total cost of feed, lowering its cost will
redound to the cost of chicken production.
Just
how low should the cost of corn be in order to help make locally produced
chicken competitive with imported chicken? For perspective, to produce a
dressed chicken at P100 per kilo, the cost of corn should level at P11.25 per
kilo. Currently, this is pegged at around P17 per kilo while imported buying is
around P16.50.
This
means that to ensure a fairly competitive price of chicken, the price of corn
should range between P11.25 to P15.35 per kilo in Luzon and between P13.40 and
P17.75 per kilo in Mindanao.
Clearly,
helping keep the local poultry industry afloat is a complex but also necessary
undertaking. Government should listen to industry experts in crafting policy
reforms that will guarantee food production that is at par with demand. Steps
may include lowering the cost of inputs, such as corn and other feed
ingredients, in addition to the possibility of subsidies on corn farming to
meet this goal.
More
broadly, the government can also take steps to curb the appeal of importing by
regulating traders and their so far untethered margins. That the sector
benefits from something that is demonstrably unsustainable for most should be
discouraged. Finally, it is high time to review the tariff implementation for
chicken, still to guard against the collapse of an already beleaguered
industry.
Ruga, fura and blind interventions
Henry Boyo
The news of the Federal Government’s plans to establish Ruga, or
cattle colonies throughout the federation started filtering out after President
Muhammadu Buhari was re-elected as President, and his party, the All
Progressives Congress also won a majority of seats in the National Assembly after
the conclusion of the February 2019 elections.
Further confirmation of government’s Ruga plans was made on May
21, 2019, by former Minister for Agriculture, Audu Ogbe, who revealed that land
had been selected for Ruga programme in all the states of the federation. The
project, according to the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Agriculture
and Rural Development, Mohammed Umar, would be provided with necessary
facilities to ensure that cattle breeders have access to grazing land, potable
water, regular power supply, with provision also for living quarters and
schools for the cattle rearers’ children.
Unexpectedly, however, the cost of establishing Ruga settlements
has neither been revealed nor appropriated in the 2019 budget! Consequently,
critics wonder why the haste to create herdsmen’s settlements when Nigeria’s
major roads are presently besieged, according to several reports of victims, by
alleged Fulani herdsmen, who kidnap, terrorise and kill travellers on our
highways.
Curiously, government has not shown any serious commitment to
reduce the intensity of brigandage, kidnapping and farmland destruction by
these herdsmen who were, incidentally, earlier identified by Mr. President,
himself, as “fleeing” fighters from Muammar Gadaffi’s Libya!
Equally troubling is the latest government directive for all
migrants, amongst whom are thousands of herdsmen and those from Niger, Chad and
other Sahelian countries to register their immigration status, to presumably,
regularise their stay, when in contrast, Nigerians are regularly deported or
promptly repatriated from several countries, within and outside Africa, for not
having requisite qualification to be residents!
Furthermore, it does not add up that President Buhari would
defend “fleeing” terrorists from Libya and elsewhere, against bona fide,
peace-loving Nigerians. Nevertheless, Meyitti Allah, the cattle breeders
association, has remained an unrepentant supporter of their life patron’s Ruga
plan, as they continue to threaten national security, with provocative
statements, which have, unexpectedly, attracted no reprimand.
Ironically, the President’s team has not also shown much
enthusiasm, for the creative offer from Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano
State, to provide adequate land and facilities to accommodate all herdsmen for
the development of integrated cattle ranches, which would support an economic
value change for slaughtering, packaging and effective distribution of beef and
dairy products nationwide. Ganduje also wisely observed that “Ruga is supposed
to be for states where the Fulani reside; you cannot implement Ruga where the
indigenes are not Fulani.”
Predictably also, the proposed railway line from Niger Republic
to Katsina, together with Nigeria’s notoriously porous borders, will invariably
complicate the issue of migration and domestic insecurity, while adherence to
ECOWAS and AfCFTA protocols may protect the influx of such jobless migrants,
who may be recruited by fundamentalists like the dreaded Boko Haram sect, to
wreck more havoc on Nigerians.
The above notwithstanding, the leaders of Nigeria’s ruling party
and other Northern oligarchs continue to sway, unabashedly, in a locked step
with Mr. President’s body language on the nationwide establishment of Ruga,
even when traditional leaders and opinion leaders throughout Southern Nigerian
and the Middle Belt have bluntly rejected the proposal.
Incidentally, the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Godwin
Emefiele, was recently rewarded with another five-year term, by President
Buhari, even when the governor failed in 2016 to prevent massive devaluation of
naira, and also, failed to achieve the CBN’s prime objective of stable and low
price levels that would drive inclusive growth. Emefiele has, not surprisingly
also, enthusiastically aligned with his benefactor to deny official forex to
milk importers so that milk producers will be compelled to develop the local
dairy industry.
Arguably, the CBN’s forex ban is clearly precipitate and
probably not well-thought-through. Although Emefiele has indicated that
the forex ban will save Nigeria about $1.2bn annually, the drawbacks of this
ban are also quite formidable. Invariably, the welfare of the current corporate
players in the milk market may not have been fairly considered.
Incidentally, FrieslandCampina, who are probably the major local
players in this market, are reportedly already strategically supporting local
farmers to boost volume and best quality standards in milk production, with
$23m additional investment announced in September 2018.
However, it would certainly be more proactive if the CBN engages
local milk producers and supports them with reasonably priced loans below five
per cent so as to steadily develop and expand a comprehensive dairy business
sector. Instructively, the local species of long-horned cows, reportedly, have
a daily milk output that is less than 10 per cent of the output from the
special cows breeds, used successfully for milk production elsewhere.
In this event, stakeholders would be encouraged to adopt high
lactation and tropical disease-resistant foreign breeds, to set up a dairy
value chain, complete with standard equipment and facilities for training more
farm workers and technicians, while a tested collection and distribution
network would be established, before any talk of forex denial to milk
importers. Invariably, this process may require a four to five-year gestation
period, during which time, access to forex for milk imports can be subject to a
stepwise, annual reduction. Ultimately, however, if the rules of ECOWAS and AfCFTA
membership are applied, such currency restriction to free trade may not also be
applicable to milk imports from any country in Africa.
However, the CBN’s forex denial for milk (fura) imports, will,
predictably, have a counter-productive outcome. For example, relative forex
scarcity induced by the ban would drive smugglers’ demand for dollars in the
parallel market, and inadvertently, spike the naira above N370=$1. Expectedly,
higher dollar rates will, similarly, trigger price increases for a wide range
of other grey imports, to further compound the existing challenges of high
inflation rate, low consumer demand, and rising cost of borrowing, to the
horrid discomfort of every Nigerian businessman or income earner!
Instructively, rice importation is a case in point. For example,
even though rice importers have also been denied official forex, the reality
however, is that, our neighbour, Benin Republic, with barely 12 million people,
has now become one of the largest rice importers in the world. Nigeria is
undeniably the ultimate destination for the several shiploads of rice annually
imported into Benin Republic with dollars sourced from Bureau De Change.
Ultimately, Nigeria’s government would, regrettably, receive no duties on the
huge rice and now also milk imports, which are indirectly funded from billions
of dollars that the CBN sells to the BDCs.
Predictably, the latest forex restriction to local milk
companies will also impact negatively on the turnover and profitability of
these companies. Similarly, corporate tax income as well as employee tax
payments to federal and state governments, respectively, would also decline.
Ultimately, the real product of the CBN’s blind forex denial to milk producing
companies would be reduced income on all fronts, i.e. government, distributors,
transporters, packaging manufacturers, advertisers, etc, while milk companies
will become forced to optimise and retrench more staff!
Comparatively, however, the $1.2bn forex spent by milk producers
on imports is actually a small fraction of what the NNPC spends annually to
import fuel. Any drive for forex conservation, to stimulate import
substitution, should probably start with the market for PMS (petrol).
Regrettably, however, despite Nigeria’s huge oil resource endowment, over 90
per cent of Nigeria’s PMS is presently still imported and paid for in dollars!
So, the question is, why does the CBN not also deny forex access to the NNPC
and fuel importers, so that more local fuel refineries and a robust value chain
will be fast-tracked, as expected from the forex denial to milk producers?
Despite the unfettered forex access for petrol imports by the
NNPC, possibly over 20 million litres are reportedly smuggled through porous
borders to subsidise the economy of neigbouring ECOWAS nations with possibly
well over $5bn annually.
Nevertheless, according to media reports, members of the Meyetti
Allah have readily aligned themselves, also, with the sustenance of the CBN’s
denial of forex for milk importation!
https://punchng.com/ruga-fura-and-blind-interventions/
Rice Tariffication Law — Duterte’s legacy?
August
5, 2019, 12:17 AM
BELOW THE LINE
By AMBASSADOR JOSE ABETO ZAIDE
Ambassador
José Abeto Zaide
Because Filipinos are rice
eaters, the staple is central to government agricultural policy. It is
central even to the national economy. The government policy in a
nutshell:
·
Promote food self-sufficiency,
·
Provide high income to rice
farmers.
·
Make prices affordable to consumers.
Every Philippine administration
seeks to provide the population with sufficient rice at affordable price.
But that is easier said than done. Because the bill grows larger and the
policy is unable to keep pace with exponential increase in our rate of
population growth.
A well-intentioned and simpatico reader, who asks to remain
unnamed, is sensible like many others to our government’s challenge to provide
the basic staple at the Filipino tables at affordable price. My Deep Throat
source is long in the tooth in the rice business. He offers an answer to
our annual shortage and our need to augment it with imported rice. I
reproduce the long and short of it below:
***
Every year in recorded memory,
the old Rice and Corn Administration (RCA) and its successor, the National Food
Administration (NFA), are mandated to provide Filipinos with the basic staple
from local as well as imported sources. But if rice is available at the
socialized price, there may not always be enough of it. Or if there is enough, it
may not be available at socialized price.
Several Philippine
administrations have come short trying to find the happy mean between a good
market price for our farmers and a stable price for the staple commodity for
the populace. There are several reasons for this slippery slope.
Government does not budget enough to purchase the national harvest… Or it
lacks the manpower to source and purchase the harvest throughout the
country… Or it does not have sufficient warehouses for storage… Or
it is all of the foregoing…
So, why does the government
embark on this messy, tedious, and unworkable system of buying rice from
our farmers all these years?
***
THE GOOD NEWS. Government
does not anymore need to expend national treasure to subsidize the purchase of
rice from the farmers during harvest season. Reason: President Rodrigo Duterte
signed into law the Rice Tariffication Law on February 14, 2019, which
amended the Agricultural Tariffication Act of 1996 established for agricultural
imports except for rice. The law allows accredited private
enterprise, using their own funds instead of the government, to
import rice from local or foreign farmers.
This law came into effect in the
aftermath of the runaway surge of rice prices at the last quarter of 2018 when
NFA rice stocks were emptied. As Filipinos struggle with inflation, the
government must find ways to provide affordable rice staple to the
everyman. With the rice tariffication law, NFA now has the instrument to
address the peaks and valleys. (As of now, “medyo desintunado, kaya kailangan
lang ang right
timing or proper tuning.”
We still need to orchestrate and to calibrate when to allow and/or when to
restrain the supply of rice in the market.)
·
DURING THE LEAN MONTHS
– Time the release of rice into the market so that stocks are available
at affordable price for consumers.
·
BEFORE THE HARVEST SEASON
– Allow the price of rice to bump up to ensure that our farmers derive a
good return on their investment.
·
OBJECTIVE: Ultimately, to give to
our farmers (rather than to the foreign suppliers) the incentive and just
rewards to raise their quality of life, enabling them to buy food, clothing,
shelter, education for their family, etc. This multiplier effect creates jobs,
engenders peace and order, prosperity and wellbeing to everybody and not only
to the farmers. This is the best way to pull our people out of poverty. (It may
even encourage urban informal settlers to return to the farms where there is
employment and livelihood opportunity.)
Our Rice Tariffication Law is an
idea whose time has come. But it also needs the right timing to hit the
right pitch. To put teeth to good intentions and high hopes, our Deep
Source suggests an enforcer to ensure that it succeeds – something that only a
Dirty Harry president can do:
1.
Authorize NFA, NBI, and the
police authorities to arrest rice smugglers and people releasing imported rice
during the harvest season. Offenders can be penalized with perpetual
cancellation of permits and licenses to import rice, confiscation of warehouses
termination of operations.Transgressors are charged with economic sabotage and
incarcerated (for undercutting the livelihood of millions of farmers and for
hindering and destroying the opportunity for the President to bring the country
to self-sufficient golden era.)
2.
The rice retailers should be made
accountable, like the rice smugglers.
3.
Reward those on the side of
angels, who help the authorities arrest rice smugglers and importers and
retailers selling imported rice during the harvest season.
***
My Deep Throat source has seen
wasted opportunities all these years. He believes that — (without
repealing or amending the Law of Supply & Demand) the Duterte
administration can find the formula which has bedeviled previous
administrations: Fair returns and incentive to our farmers and affordable
prices and assured supply for our populace. The solution is nigh.
***
Now Showing:. “ENCOMPASSING,” Gus Albor’s
exhibit runs at Finale Art File until 29 August. Only two pieces fill the vast
exhibit hall -A walk-thru a counter-clockwise door for inter-action with
the artist; and a separate visual reflection. My critique &fearless
forecast: Sure to start the sincerest form of compliment.
KNCCI boss
calls for rice import ban
Munene Kamau And George Orido 05th Aug 2019
00:00:00 GMT +0300
Kenya National
Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Richard Ngatia (centre) Chamber Vice
President Eric Ruto (right) and the Kirinyaga Chamber Chapter Chairman Waweru
Njogu (left) take part in a dance in Kirinyaga East Sub-county. [Munene Kamau, Standard]
A traders' lobby has called for tight control of rice imports
into the country from destinations such as Pakistan.
The Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry
(KNCCI), through its president Richard Ngatia said on Saturday that the
imported rice is a threat to Kenyan farmers.
Speaking in Mwea town during the Kirinyaga Cultural Festival,
Mr Ngatia reckoned that such a move would boost rice production in the country.
Mr Ngatia decried a poor road network in Kirinyaga,
especially in Mwea, Gichugu and Kirinyaga Central Sub-counties as a
reason why agricultural output was low.
“Farmers are unable to transport their products to the market
therefore limiting the potential of the agriculture sub-sector,” Ngatia said.
He called for improved agricultural value chains for less
dominant cash crops such as bananas, tomatoes, French beans, beans, mangoes and
maize.
Commenting about the festival, Ngatia said it is a good way
for local traders to network.
The festival organised by KNCCI, Kirinyaga Chapter in
conjunction with the Njukiine Ward MCA Fredrick Bundi attracted a record 7000
attendants.
Mr Bundi said next year the event will run for a whole week
going by the large turn out and assured the residents more attractions will be
added to make it more meaningful and relevant to people.
Plan
early
SEE
ALSO :Private sector
upbeat over Rotich Budget
This year's festival was a two-day affair.
Kirinyaga Chapter Chamber Chairman Waweru Njogu said his
members will from start planning for next year’s event early given the success
they have witnessed this year.
Meawhile, KNCCI has told timber merchants who import timber
from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), to start planting trees in order
to sustain their businesses.
Ngatia said importation of timber from the foreign country
was just a short term solution and observed that only tree planning will save
the local timber industry.
He said that at one point the largest tropical forest in
Africa, the Congo forest, would be depleted just the way Kenyan forests have
been depleted
SEE
ALSO :Trade body lauds
move to pay debts
“Since we have many forest areas which have been left bare in
this country due to uncontrolled and unregulated tree felling, I'm urging our
brothers in the timber industry to start planting trees, ”Ngatia said.
“Importation of timber is just a short term
solution. I would want the traders who are our members to embark on massive
tree planting which would ensure a sustainable business since timber harvesting
will be guaranteed."
Chinese salt-tolerant rice bears fruit in Dubai
2019-08-05
08:23:06China DailyEditor : Li Yan
Farmers harvest crops as part of a test of saltwater-tolerant rice
in Dubai. (Photo/China Daily)
Agricultural scientists from China
who set a rice production record in a Dubai desert are expanding their test
plantings to look for even more productive strains that suit local palates.
The average annual yield－9.4 metric tons per hectare－has already more than doubled that
of previous rice cultivation efforts in Dubai led by India and Pakistan,
according to Cheng Yunfeng, manager of Wuhan Haidao International, which is
based in Hubei province and oversees the trial planting program.
Cheng said production was similar
to high-yield varieties intended for conventional arable land.
The program, which ran from
November to June, turned 3.6 hectares of barren desert near the outskirts of
the city of Dubai into green paddy fields.
The rice with such abundant yields
is known as saltwater-tolerant rice and is a variety developed in China that
can cope with heavy salt concentrations and being submerged.
The original, wild crop, discovered
on the coast of Guangdong province in the 1980s, has been developed into a
family of saltwater-tolerant strains. Trial cultivations across China maximized
desirable traits before the project expanded overseas.
"The success of our first
trial in Dubai is a crucial step in promoting saltwater-tolerant rice across
the Middle East and even around the globe," Cheng said.
A decadelong cooperation plan was
signed in mid-July to further expand trial plantings and encourage commercial
adoption across the United Arab Emirates, he said.
Trying to grow rice in rocky desert
soil is a huge undertaking in itself. In Dubai, a shortage of fresh water
compounded the challenge and thwarted decades of attempts to grow crops on a
large scale there.
"Ground water used for
irrigation in Dubai has an average salt content of 1.6 percent, almost equivalent
to the water in the South China Sea," Cheng said. "That would kill
tender seedlings for sure.
"To address the issue, we
first used the traditional approach of diluting the water's salt content to
about 0.6 percent. More importantly, we adopted a dry, direct-seeding method
that reduces demand for irrigation water.
"There is no need to apply the
dry-seeding approach in our planting center in Wuhan, since the city has
sufficient fresh water. But in foreign lands, it's crucial to upgrade
techniques to adapt to local conditions."
The bold move to switch seeding
approaches meant intense manual labor was needed to complete the planting
quickly.
"We transported two
rice-sowing machines from China to speed up the process," Cheng said.
But Dubai also has advantages, such
as warm temperatures and abundant sunlight that foster the growth of rice.
"In the past year, we have
collected a certain amount of data and information that will help us determine
optimal sowing seasons in the future and assess how different agricultural
practices, including irrigation and use of fertilizers and pesticides, affect
eventual output," Cheng said.
In future trial plantings, the
company aims to isolate productive rice strains while further enhancing their
resilience and fine-tuning the texture to the palates of local residents, who
prefer fluffy rice to sticky rice.
"Efficient use of scarce water
sources is also on top of our agenda," he said.
USDA
Estimates Marginal Decline In Bangladesh Rice Production In MY 2019/20
USDA Estimates Marginal Decline In Bangladesh
Rice Production In MY 2019/20
August
5, 2019 8:45 IST | capital market
As
per the latest release by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), for
MY 2019/20 (May/April), Bangladesh rice production forecast is revised
marginally lower to 35.2 MMT from 11.7 million hectares on reduced planting of
Aus (summer) rice. Aus rice (planted in March/April and harvested in
July/August) production is estimated lower at 2.2 MMT due to decreased acreage
(1 million hectare) against the initial expectation (1.17 million hectares);
the acreage was reduced due to shifts to other competing crops and also due to
flooding, which affected 28 districts out of 64. Field sources report that
farmers switched from Aus rice to jute, maize, and vegetable cultivation due to
higher returns to recover the lower return from Boro (winter) rice production.
The
MY 2019/20 rice import forecast is lowered to 0.1 MMT on expectation of strong
import protection policy. The added 55 percent tariff on rice imports (see
Policy section below) further affected import prospects. MY 2018/19 rice
imports are revised marginally lower to 0.55 MMT based on the latest customs
data.
According
to the Ministry of Food (MOF), government rice stocks on July 29, 2019 were 1.5
MMT, compared to 1.3 MMT at the same time last year. In July 29, 2019, wheat
stocks at public granaries were 0.306 MMT, up from 0.265 MMT one year earlier.
Customs Seizes
N458m Fake Drug, Foreign Rice In Ogun, Lagos
August 4, 2019
The unit also said it intercepted 1,239 cartons of fake viagra, sexual enhancements drugs with N409million and smuggled foreign parboiled rice worth N36.4million along the border.
FOU, is an anti-smuggling unit of the service in the South-Western part of the country and is saddled with the responsibility of serving as the last layer for smuggled or under-declared cargoes at the seaports or land borders.
However, taking journalists round the seizures yesterday, the Customs Area Controller of the unit, Compt. Mohammed Aliyu said the cargoes were intercepted on the highway. Speaking further, he said 2751 bags of rice worth N36.4million and 147 pieces of used tyres worth N1.02million were also intercepted by the unit.
He said, “the duty paid value of interceptions were N458million and we will not relent our effort until smuggling is suppressed to the barest minimum in the south west”.
“You can see, I told you the last time we came for the conference that smuggling will be suppressed because my officers are on their trail, anywhere they hide we shall get to them.”
It would be recalled that last week, the unit intercepted contrabands such as vehicles, pharmaceuticals and foreign parboiled rice worth N1.2billion from smugglers. The seizures include six vehicles namely, Toyota Tacoma, 2 Lexus ES350, 2 Toyota Highlander and Toyota Hilux with Duty Paid Value (DPV) of N242million were intercepted.
Others are 541 cartons of Original chest and lung tablets; 211 cartons of Analgin Injection; 238 cartons of Really Extra Diclofenac; 158 cartons of Double actions Labimol Diclogenac potassium capsules.
Also intercepted are 1698 cartons of Powermantlets, 671 kg of pangolin scales and 5, 226 bags of smuggled foreign parboiled rice all with Duty Paid Value of N1.01billion. He said, “Within a week, because of the motivations we just got which made some impact, we have intercepted six cars worth over N242million at various border points and various car mart.”
“The vehicles are Toyota Tacoma worth N47.8million, Lexus ES 350 at N16.5million, Toyota Highlander worth N47.5million and another Lexus ES RX 350L at N34million. Other vehicles are Toyota Hilux with Duty Paid value of N41.6million and Toyota Highlander at N54.5million.”
Six rice millers duped of Rs 9 cr
Aug 5, 2019, 6:59 AM; last updated: Aug 5, 2019, 10:29 AM
(IST)
File photo
Parveen Arora
Tribune News Service
Karnal, August 4
Six rice millers of Karnal district have
allegedly been cheated to the tune of Rs9 crore after supplying around 1,000
tonnes of rice to a firm in Dubai. They have not got payment from the firm,
which has left them on the brink of bankruptcy.
The millers
alleged that a fraudster of Dubai projected himself as a multi-millionaire with
the help of two Indians. They said he disappeared with their rice in Dubai.
They said they visited Dubai several times, but got no relief.
They approached CM Manohar Lal Khattar,
requesting him to intervene. They approached Superintendent of Police Surinder
Singh Bhoria, who assigned the case to detective staff.
The millers had
now mailed their issue to PM Narendra Modi, the High Commissioner of UAE in
India and the Director General, Foreign Trade and Commerce Ministry. They had
sent a letter to the King of Dubai, but did not get any response.
Vipin Goel,
managing director of Kamla Rice and General Mills in Karnal, said they had sold
rice to Dubai’s Al Rawnaq Al Thahbhi General Trading through a person of Karnal
and another of Kaithal, who had lured them into selling the rice.
The six millers
— two each of Taraori and Nissing and one each of Karnal and Assandh — had
shipped 37 containers in March and April. They had been sent nine telegraphic
transfer receipts for shipments as proof that their payments were being
electronically remitted.
The payments
were subsequently cancelled and the security cheques bounced, said Goel, who had
dispatched 17 containers. “I had flown to Dubai five times in the past three
months, but to no avail. It will take us years to recover our losses,” he said.
Pawan Gupta of
Heera Rice Mill in Assandh said he lost 120 tonnes of rice worth Rs1 crore. “I
went to Dubai and found that the company was based in a rented building. We now
hope for help from the CM and Centre,” he said
A covert war that helped India crush Pakistan in
1971 (Book Review)
A covert war that helped India crush Pakistan in 1971 (Book
Review)
Title: Operation - The Untold Story of India''s Covert Naval War
in East Pakistan; Author: Captain M.N.R. Sawant and Sandeep Unnithan;
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India; Pages: 272; Price: Rs 499
This is an explosive book that uncovers, for the first time
publicly, a major covert war the Indian Navy waged in 1971 to help give birth
to Bangladesh as an independent nation.
The Navy''s known success story thus far has been limited to
what it achieved by pounding Karachi and virtually crippling the Pakistan Navy
on the western front. But the Navy, the authors say, was far more deeply
involved in the conflict, that too long before war broke out in December 1971,
leading to Pakistan''s capitulation in its eastern wing.
What gave impetus to the massive covert operation was a virtual
rebellion in the Pakistan Navy just after the Bangladesh uprising commenced in
March that year, driving millions to take refuge in India. Eight Bengali naval
personnel deployed in a French built submarine deserted the Pakistan Navy while
abroad. They contacted the Indian embassy in Madrid and became the base on
which the Indian Navy built its covert operation.
Captain Samant was a key figure in the covert naval war, which
was personally approved and regularly monitored by Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi, says journalist and co-author Unnithan.
India''s military assistance to the Bangladesh Mukti Bahini
began without fanfare soon after the Pakistani military cracked down on
defenseless civilians in Dhaka, killing thousands. Knowing how important
waterways were in Bangladesh, the Indian Navy decided to train deserters and
young volunteers from the refugee camps in India in clandestine warfare - to
use diving sets, limpet mines and plastic explosives.
When the training of the first batch of 100 recruits began in
early May, the eight deserters proved invaluable as interpreters. "The
Navy aimed to transform their recruits into underwater weapon delivery units -
assault swimmers who could swim up to 6 hours at a stretch, carrying a 3-4 kg
limpet mine under all operational conditions - blinding rain, at night, and in
zero visibility conditions."
But the first crop of trainees tired easily and faltered during
long-distance swimming, thanks to their dal rice rations. Eggs, lemon and fruit
were then added to the menu. It did the trick! Once the Mukti Bahini made land
travel near difficult for the Pakistan Army, the India-trained Bengali
commandos stepped in.
By early August, an all-Bangladeshi unit of 178 naval commandos
and leaders was ready. The Indian assessment was that 10 per cent were likely
to be killed or captured. The fireworks began in August and didn''t stop till
the formal war broke out between India and Pakistan in December.
A total of 457 commandos were trained and they carried out deep
penetration naval raids inside enemy territory to sink and cripple over 100,000
tonnes of shipping - the largest operation of its kind since World War II. By
the time formal war erupted, the Pakistan Navy was in shambles in East Pakistan
and, by extension, so was the Army.
Once the stealthy naval sabotage began, the Pakistani military
began herding ships carrying essential supplies into river convoys in order to
move fuel, war material and troops by day. Pakistani vessels stopped moving at
night. In the meantime, the number of deserters from the Pakistan Navy swelled.
The Indians converted two Calcutta Port Trust vessels into gunboats to hit at
merchant shipping and Pakistani Navy.
By November, the Mukti Bahini was attacking the Pakistani Army
at will across the countryside. On November 4, a team of assault swimmers sank
a 700 tonne oil tanker in Chittagong. If ships were hard to hit, the commandos
targeted maritime infrastructure - jetties, barges and pylons. By the end of
November, at least a dozen India trained commandos were killed, some after
being brutally tortured by the Pakistan Army and their collaborators. By
mid-November, East Pakistan had become a no-go zone for global shipping.--
mr/vd/am
Only eight cattle
markets in Karachi are legal
BY NEWS
DESK , (LAST UPDATED
KARACHI: The Sindh government on Saturday approved the setting up of
cattle markets in eight locations in Karachi as illegal cattle markets have
been causing traffic congestion, unhygienic conditions, and security issues in
the city.
These eight locations include
Super Highway, Malir 15-Asoo Goth, Cattle Market Landhi, Rice Godown near Babar
Market, Hamdard University near Manghopir, Moach Goth, Baldia Town.
It is pertinent to mention here
that Sindh Home Secretary Abdul Kabir Kazi has imposed a ban under Section 144
of the Code of Criminal Procedure on setting up of cattle markets at any other
locations in the port city except those approved.
Further, he has also told the
Karachi commissioner to take strict action against people who fail to follow
these orders
Karnataka’s rice bowl stares at crisis as water level in TB dam
sinks
RAICHUR
, AUGUST 03, 2019 22:35 IST
A field in Anegondi, Koppal district. Paddy transplantation should
have been completed by the end of July or first week of August. | Photo
Credit: SPECIALARRANGEMENT
Thousands of farmers desperately
wait for water to take up paddy transplantation
At a time when the Krishna is in
spate in north Karnataka, flooding
large tracts of land, the situation in the Tungabhadra basin is a complete
contrast. Farmers here are struggling to grow even one crop.
While Krishna’s catchment area on
the Maharashtra side of Western Ghats is receiving heavy monsoon rain,
Tungabhadra’s catchment area in Karnataka’s side of the same mountain range is
receiving deficient rainfall.
As a result, farmers in the
Tungabhadra command area in Koppal, Ballari and Raichur districts face a deep
crisis. Tungabhadra Reservoir held just 32.07 tmcft of water on Saturday
against its live storage capacity of around 100.8 tmcft, excluding around 33
tmcft of silt that has accumulated in the dam bed over the last 50 years. The
deficient monsoon in the Tungabhadra catchment area in the Western Ghats is the
main reason for the diminished inflow that stood at the rate of 20,091 cusecs
on Saturday.
“We need minimum of 50 tmcft
water in the dam to release for irrigation. If the storage improves, we will
convene the ICC [Irrigation Consultative Committee] meeting to decide the dates
and amount of water to be released from the dam to various canals for
irrigation,” S.H. Manjappa, chief engineer of Tungabhadra Project, told The
Hindu on Thursday.
Thousands of farmers across the
command area, after preparing their paddy fields and growing paddy saplings in
the nursery beds, are desperately waiting for water to take up transplantation.
Many farmers, especially in Gangavati and Karatagi area, have completed the
transplantation using locally-available water sources in the hope that they
will receive dam water shortly. However, poor storage in the reservoir and the
unsatisfactory inflow is cause for concern. Paddy transplantation should have been
completed by the end of July or first week of August. Delayed transplantation
essentially means increase in the cost of cultivation and decrease in quality
and productivity. For, it stretches the harvest season into deep winter when
the premature paddy produces hollow and chaffy panicles and attracts more
diseases. “Many people have already left for cities in search of jobs. If the
monsoon picks up and inflow into the Tungabhadra dam improves, they will
return,” said Chamarasa Malipatil, farmers’ leader from Raichur and honorary
president of KRRS.
The Tungabhadra command area,
consisting of around 10 lakh acres of land in Koppal, Ballari and Raichur
districts, is popularly known as the “rice bowl of Karnataka”. It produces
high-quality Sona Masuri rice that is in great demand across the country. The
premium variety is also popular in Dubai, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and
other rice-consuming countries.
Mills have little work
Over 400 rice mills operating in
the region that produced around 20 million quintals of paddy in the first crop
season and around 10 million quintals in the second season are in crisis. The
situation might get worse now with even one crop seeming unlikely.
Besides, many farmers, especially
those in the tail-end parts of the canals that receive insufficient water, have
already changed their crop pattern by shifting from paddy cultivation to crops
such as chilli that require relatively less water.
“Tungabhadra is the lifeline of
Koppal, Ballari and Raichur. The deficient monsoon and resultantly diminished
paddy production in the command area has pushed the rice industry into crisis
forcing many mills to shut down or switch to seasonal operation. The trouble is
likely to deepen this year,” Suribabu Nekkanti, a prominent rice miller from
Gangavathi and president of Gangavathi Rice Millers’ Association, told The
Hindu.
Farmers
decry low farmgate prices of rice
Rhodina Villanueva (The Philippine Star) -
August 4, 2019 - 12:00am
Farmers
and rice sufficiency advocates have warned of further industry setbacks if
farmgate prices continue to decline amid surging rice importation.
MANILA, Philippines — Rice farmers are reeling from declining
farmgate prices as cheap imported rice continues to flood the market five
months after the implementation of Republic Act (RA) 11203 or the Rice
Liberalization Law.
Farmers and rice sufficiency advocates have warned of further
industry setbacks if farmgate prices continue to decline amid surging rice
importation.
“It is obvious why we have been opposing the law – the farmers’
situation did not improve even after five months of implementing RA 11203.
Instead it is worsening, primarily due to depressed farmgate prices of palay
that did not even reach P20 per kilo,” Cathy Estavillo, Bantay Bigas
spokesperson and Amihan secretary-general, said.
“This is bankruptcy and inevitable displacement of farmers from
rice lands. More small peasants will be transformed into helpless farm
workers,” Estavillo said.
“Consequently, the productive rice lands will be converted into
other uses, such as what is being carried out in Central Luzon and Southern
Tagalog, all benefiting landlords and real estate developers,” she said.
“This will be the legacy of the Duterte regime, a Philippines
without rice lands or total displacement of rice farmers,” she warned.
“If the ‘rule of thumb’ shall be applied, farmgate prices should
be at P23 to P29 per kilo, or P20 to P25,” Estavillo added.
She also said the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) is
not enough to reverse the farmers’ plight. “To show that there is government
support to affected rice farmers, they are using RCEF. RCEF is only allocated
P10 billion, and only a measly 10 percent is alloted to credit,” she said.
The current industry situation, she said, is threatening the
country’s food security.
“Destroying our national food security is a serious crime against
the people, as it is synonymous to throwing millions of poor Filipinos into
hunger or starvation and declining household income,” she said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Francis Pangilinan has filed a resolution seeking
a Senate inquiry into the impact of the Rice Tariffication Law on farmers and
the local rice industry.
“Farmers tell us that their earnings dropped further with the
implementation of the law. The impact on our farmers is swift and brutal but
the implementation of the provisions aimed at easing this severe effect is slow
if non-existent,” Pangilinan said.
Pangilinan said rice farmers are discouraged from toiling in the
farms because their produce are purchased at lower prices, and despite the rice
imports and the lower palay prices, consumers still buy at high prices. – Louise
Maureen Simeon
Drones to help Iloilo farmers cut costs
August
4, 2019, 3:23 PM
By Tara Yap
ILOILO CITY—Rice farmers in the city and the province will soon be using
agricultural drones to reduce costs.
Agricultural drone such as this was used in a demo farm of the
Department of Agriculture in Iloilo City. (DA Photo / MANILA BULLETIN)
“We cannot lower the cost of
production unless we mechanize,” explained Jasper Tallada of the Philippine
Rice Research Institute (PhilRice).
Partnering with the Western
Visayas Integrated Agricultural Research Center (WESVIARC) of the Department of
Agriculture (DA), PhilRice started demonstrating the use of agricultural drones
at WESVIARC’s 2,500 square-meter demo field in this city.
The drones of New Hope Corp. can
be used as seed spreaders and liquid sprayers for fertilizer and pesticides.
“This is the latest precision and
smart farming technologies in rice production in the country,” said Roger
Barroga, head of PhilRice’s Future Rice program.
PhilRice found the seeds were
evenly dispersed by the drone, resulting in a higher tiling rate. The drone
sprayer, on the other hand, was more efficient than a power-knapsack sprayer in
disseminating herbicides.
Barroga underscored that farmers
need drone technology to stay competitive by lowering production cost.
Hybrid seeds, fertilizers, and shallow tube wells as quick fixes
to our rice dilemma
Published August 3, 2019, 10:00 PM
Dr. Emil Q. Javier
All along our problem with
agriculture had been not so much lack of policies and enabling legislation but
lack of intelligent program planning and competent, no-nonsense implementation.
Unfortunately, this applies as well to many aspects of our
public life. The closure and
rehabilitation of Boracay did not require new policies and legislation. Simply
resolute action from the executive branch, with no less than the President
demanding appropriate action based on existing environment laws, rules and regulations.
Most if not all the strategic
directions we need to modernize agriculture are embodied in the Agriculture and
Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA), the Fisheries Code, the Forestry Code, the
Local Government Code, and various acts creating specialized agencies like Land
Bank of the Philippines, Philippine Coconut Authority, National Food Authority,
Sugar Regulatory Administration, Philippine Rice Research Institute, Philippine
Carabao Center, Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization
as well as specialized research and development units in the Department of
Science and Technology and in a number of state universities and colleges.
Since the last two years of the
administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, during the full six-year
term of President Benigno Aquino up to the present (2008-2019), funding for the
Department of Agriculture had not been a constraint.
We knew the lifting of the
quantitative restrictions on rice imports was forthcoming because that was part
of our obligations when we signed up with the World Trade Organization. We
asked for and received a reprieve twice. We had more than 10 years to prepare
our farmers. But we were in denial and did nothing.
Yes, we created the Agriculture
Competitive Enhancement Fund (ACEF) no less under the direct supervision of the
Joint Congressional Committee on Agricultural and Fisheries Modernization
(COCAFM). But we made a mess of it. After spending billions with ACEF, we have
nothing to show for it.
We knew that the drop in farm
gate price of palay was forthcoming with the entry of cheap imports from
Vietnam and Thailand. The necessary adjustments to make our farms more
productive and competitive will take time. But the drop of palay price is
substantial and immediate.
NOW THE POOR RICE FARMERS
UNFAIRLY HAVE TO BEAR THE FULL BURDEN OF ADJUSTMENT TO MARKET LIBERALIZATION.
How to protect
incomes of rice farmers
incomes of rice farmers
The immediate challenge is to how
to empower our rice farmers to be more productive and competitive with imports.
Our rice farms with irrigation and with proper culture produce six tons palay
per hectare at a unit cost of P8-10 per kilogram which is competitive with the
costs of Vietnam and Thailand from whom we import most (86%) of our rice.
Thus the way to protect the incomes
of our farmers is two-fold: First, further sustainable intensification of rice
culture in favorable areas (i.e. with irrigation) through good seeds,
preferably rice hybrids, fertilization approaching the recommended rate of 150
kilograms nutrients per hectare, integrated pest management and mechanization.
And second, shift of low-yielding rainfed lowland and upland rice farms to
other crops which often have better margins than rice, if markets can be
arranged for them.
Immediate fixes
to tide farmers over
to tide farmers over
The rice farmers are crying, and
rightfully so, demanding immediate relief. The two-fold approach described
above will take easily five years. Farming is bound with the seasons and
require institutional adjustments involving many stakeholders which take time.
In the meantime, what can government do?
Short of direct cash payments to
affected farmers which is widely practiced in developed economies as a way to
compensate farmers for income shortfalls occasioned by trade policies over
which the farmers have little control, the alternative is subsidies in cash or
in kind as provided for in the Rice Competitive Enhancement Fund (RCEF).
RCEF provided subsidy for seeds
but limited to INBRED SEEDS. Since more than 90% of our rice farmers have
already adopted use of high yielding inbreds, the impact from inbreds will be
minimal. Better that the seed subsidy be
applicable as well with rice hybrid seeds.
RCEF likewise had provision for
free farm machines and equipment. But among the farm equipment, the ones with
the most immediate impact and potentially most profitable is the use of shallow
tube wells (STW) to guarantee availability of water in the volumes and times
they are needed by crops. Not only are STWs very useful for rice, even more
importantly the water control which STWs provide the farmers will enable the
rice farmers to grow higher-value crops in relay with their rice main crops
(diversification). Very often the relay crops generate far more cash income
than rice.
With good seed and available
water, the next main constraint is soil fertility. Unfortunately, most rice
farmers do not apply enough fertilizers. The usual reason is lack of cash with
which to purchase fertilizers. But it makes a lot of sense to fertilize. A
kilogram of nitrogen fertilizer costing P60.00-P70.00 can raise an additional
P20-P40 kilograms of palay, valued at P340.00-P680.00.
Thus providing subsidized hybrid
seeds and fertilizers to bonafide individual rice farmers, and STWs to a group
of farmers farming contiguous fields are effective good immediate fixes to help
farmers protect their incomes.
But by definition, immediate
fixes should be temporary and ought to be replaced as soon as possible with
permanent, sustainable, less costly and leakage-free solutions. We should learn from the past.
Firm secures deal to commercialize ‘elite’ hybrid rice varieties
August 3, 2019, 10:00 PM
By Madelaine B. Miraflor
A subsidiary of Tao Corporation,
the largest trader of molasses in the country, has secured a deal to
commercialize and distribute elite hybrid rice varieties developed by the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the world’s premier research
organization dedicated to rice.
To be specific, IRRI and Tao
Commodity Trader, Inc. (TCTI) have recently signed a seven-year Limited
Exclusivity Commercial License Agreement to promote the commercialization and
nationwide distribution of three IRRI-developed elite rice hybrids namely
Mestiso 71, Mestiso 77, and Mestiso 89.
The selected hybrid rice
varieties are bred for higher yield, superior grain quality, improved pest and
disease resistance, resilience to climate change-induced stresses, and higher
seed production.
By using these hybrid seed
varieties, farmers can increase their yields and income by up to 20 percent.
Under the agreement, TCTI will
fully invest in scaled-up development, production, and distribution for the
three rice hybrids. The company will also be in charged of meeting seed sales
objectives.
TCTI will work with Aski, Inc., a
leading microfinance company with over 18,000 farmer-clients in the
Philippines, to provide farmers with training, technologies, and financial
services to help further spread the use of the selected rice hybrids’ seeds.
In a statement, IRRI Chief of
Staff Peter Brothers highlighted the importance of IRRI working with private
sector partners to deliver the fruits of the agency’s research to end-users.
The Tao-IRRI deal happened
through the the rice research agency’s Hybrid Rice Development Consortium
(HRDC), which has a key role in the development of elite hybrids suited to
different agro-climatic conditions.
India’s Non-basmati Rice Exporters Seek Parity in Import Duty
The non-basmati rice exporters,
who are facing higher procurement costs because of an increase in minimum
support prices (MSP) in the last few years, are now seeking import duty parity
for shipments to prospective nations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership (RCEP).
The Regional Comprehensive
Economic Partnership (RECP) proposes free trade agreement between 10 states of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and its six FTA partners.
Rice exporters had been
influencing the commerce ministry to address the discriminatory tariffs even
earlier, but they were able to recompense for the higher levy in the past due
to the lower MSP rates domestically and the premium for Indian rice exports in
global markets. However, the rise in MSP for paddy over the last couple of
years has reduced their margins.
Increment in Paddy MSP
Government increased paddy’s MSP
to Rs 1,815 per quintal for the year 2019-20, while the A-grade variety’s MSP
was hiked to Rs 1,835 i.e increment of rupees 20 and 3.7% over the previous
year. The MSP was increased by 13% for the 2018-19 season.
The Exporters are hoping that the
commerce ministry will take up this issue at the forthcoming RCEP ministerial
meeting to be held in Beijing on August 2-3. Piyush Goyal (Commerce Minister),
who was earlier supposed to participate in the discussion, will not attend
ministerial meeting in Beijing. Instead of him, India will be represented by
commerce secretary Anup Wadhawan.
B V Krishna Rao (president of the
association) said that “Rice exports from India incur a substantially higher import duty
in countries including Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and
Malaysia, while competitors face a lower rate”.
Non-basmati Exports from India,
the largest exporter of the raw material have more than halved to 7.1 lakh
tonnes in first two months of the current financial year from 15.2 million
tonnes in the same period last year.
Indian rice is sold at a premium
in the world markets due to its quality, but the members of the ASEAN impose a
higher import duty. Indonesia impose 10% import duty for Indian rice, Pakistan
has import free access. In Philippines, delivery from India sustains a 50%
duty, while it is 35% for rice from other countries. Pakistani exporters have
duty-free access to Malaysia’s rice market of Malaysia’s unlike their Indian
counterparts. China extends preferential tariffs to Pakistan and attempts by
Indian rice exporters to tap the Chinese market have seen limited success. In
case of countries like South Korea and Japan the import impose for Indian rice
is in the high triple-digit.
The global rice trade has also
turned in favour of nations such as Pakistan, China and Thailand, with
trade agreements between Asian countries also hurting the growth rice exports
from India.
Chhattisgarh: PDS scam accused gets bail
TNN | Updated: Aug 4, 2019, 12:02 IST
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RAIPUR: The Chhattisgarh high court has granted bail to
the erstwhile civil supplies corporation manager Shivshankar Bhatt, who is one
of the main accused in the multi-crore public distribution scheme (PDS) scam
that surfaced during the previous BJP regime in the state.
The bench of Justice Goutam Bhaduri granted bail to Bhatt on Friday, an accused in the scam involving distribution of subsidized rice at Rs1 per kilogram, the petitioner's counsel Peeyush Bhatia told TOI.
The bench of Justice Goutam Bhaduri granted bail to Bhatt on Friday, an accused in the scam involving distribution of subsidized rice at Rs1 per kilogram, the petitioner's counsel Peeyush Bhatia told TOI.
Earlier, in April this year, the high court
had granted anticipatory bail to IAS officer Anil Tuteja, whose name also
figured as an accused in the scam.
The EOW/ACB, which is investigating the PDS scam, had named 27 people as accused, including IAS officers Alok Shukla and Anil Tuteja.
Shukla, who is a 1986 batch IAS officer, served as a deputy election commissioner from 2009 to May 2014, and was the principal secretary in the food department when the scam took place, while Tuteja was the managing director of the civil supplies corporation.
In July 2015, the Raman Singh-led BJP government had referred the cases to the Centre against the two IAS officials for prosecution on the charges of cheating, criminal conspiracy and provision of prevention of corruption act.
Subsequently, the Centre granted sanction for their prosecution nearly two years ago. EOW/ACB had also filed a supplementary chargesheet against both the IAS officers on December 5, 2018, just six days before assembly polls.
As per the EOW/ACB, the corporation allowed rice millers to supply poor quality PDS rice to the BJP led state government and received commission from them and distributed it by colluding with government functionaries.
The bureau had later recovered cash of Rs4 crore from the drawers of bureaucrats who were exposed in the scam.
Earlier on January this year, the Congress government decided to reopen the probe and set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the scam.
The EOW/ACB, which is investigating the PDS scam, had named 27 people as accused, including IAS officers Alok Shukla and Anil Tuteja.
Shukla, who is a 1986 batch IAS officer, served as a deputy election commissioner from 2009 to May 2014, and was the principal secretary in the food department when the scam took place, while Tuteja was the managing director of the civil supplies corporation.
In July 2015, the Raman Singh-led BJP government had referred the cases to the Centre against the two IAS officials for prosecution on the charges of cheating, criminal conspiracy and provision of prevention of corruption act.
Subsequently, the Centre granted sanction for their prosecution nearly two years ago. EOW/ACB had also filed a supplementary chargesheet against both the IAS officers on December 5, 2018, just six days before assembly polls.
As per the EOW/ACB, the corporation allowed rice millers to supply poor quality PDS rice to the BJP led state government and received commission from them and distributed it by colluding with government functionaries.
The bureau had later recovered cash of Rs4 crore from the drawers of bureaucrats who were exposed in the scam.
Earlier on January this year, the Congress government decided to reopen the probe and set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the scam.
'It
feels like something out of a bad sci-fi movie'
Lewis Ziska has
researched plants at USDA across five administrations, contributing
significantly to the country’s understanding of how climate change affects
agriculture. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO
A top climate scientist quit USDA,
following others who say Trump has politicized science.
One of the nation’s leading climate change scientists is quitting
the Agriculture Department in protest over the Trump administration’s efforts
to bury his groundbreaking study about how rice loses nutrients due to rising
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Lewis Ziska, a 62-year-old plant physiologist who’s worked at
USDA’s Agricultural Research Service for more than two decades, told POLITICO
he was alarmed when department officials not only questioned the findings of
the study — which raised potentially serious concerns for the 600 million
people who depend on rice for most of their calories — but also tried to
minimize press coverage of the paper, which was published in the journal
Science Advances last year.
“You get the sense that things have changed, that this is not a
place for you to be exploring things that don't agree with someone's political
views,” Ziska said in a wide-ranging interview. “That's so sad. I can't even
begin to tell you how sad that is.”
The departure follows several other government officials recently
resigning from their posts over accusations that the administration is
censoring climate science — reports that have raised alarm about scientific
integrity in the federal government.
Last week, an intelligence analyst at the State Department said he
left his post after administration officials blocked his testimony to Congress
about the wide-ranging national security implications of climate change. A
National Park Service employee also stepped forward, alleging she lost her job
after refusing to scrub mentions of human-caused climate change from a
peer-reviewed paper that was set to publish.
A POLITICO investigation revealed last month that USDA has
routinely buried its own climate-related science and other work on climate
change that continues. POLITICO also recently reported USDA suppressed the
release of its own plan for studying and responding to climate change.
2020 DEMS ON THE ISSUES 🇺🇸
FOOD & AGRICULTURE: FARM ECONOMY NUTRITION
The USDA has repeatedly denied having any policy to discourage
dissemination of science or the use of any climate-change related terms.
In response to Ziska’s resignation, the department said in a
statement that objections to promoting his rice study were based on scientific
disagreement involving career officials, not political appointees.
“This was a joint decision by ARS national program leaders — all
career scientists — not to send out a press release on this paper,” the
statement said.
Ziska, in describing his decision to leave, painted a picture of a
department in constant fear of the president and Secretary Sonny Perdue’s open
skepticism about broadly accepted climate science, leading officials to go to
extremes to obscure their work to avoid political blowback. The result, he
said, is a vastly diminished ability for taxpayer-funded scientists to provide
farmers and policymakers with important information about complex threats to
the global food supply.
Ziska, or “Lew” as he’s known to his colleagues, has researched
plants at USDA across five administrations, Republican and Democrat,
contributing significantly to the country’s understanding of how rising carbon
dioxide and changing temperatures affect everything from crops to noxious weeds
and even plants grown to make illicit drugs.
Over the years, Ziska has published studies finding that climate
change could exacerbate allergy seasons, render herbicides important for
fighting weeds less effective, and fuel a decline in the nutritional quality of
pollen important for bees. He and his colleagues are also investigating which
strains of wheat and rice will be best suited for future climate conditions.
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Each administration has had their own priorities, which sometimes
did nudge agricultural research in certain directions, but the changes were
seldom dramatic, he said. For much of his career at USDA, for example, Ziska’s
work fell under what’s known as the U.S. Global Change Research Program, an
interagency initiative that was launched during the George H.W. Bush
administration that continues to research the changing climate.
When President Donald Trump was elected in November 2016, however,
scientists began to worry that the incoming administration would be
fundamentally different. The USDA lab Ziska worked under decided preemptively
to drop the term “global change” from their name to avoid attracting unwanted
political scrutiny.
“That was not something that had ever happened before,” he
recalled. (USDA, in its statement, emphasized that the change was not in
response to political pressure.)
The overriding fear among scientists within USDA, Ziska said, was
that the administration would take an axe to the department’s science budget,
and research priorities that perhaps didn’t align with the administration’s
agenda would be the first to go. (The Trump administration has repeatedly
proposed significant cuts to ARS’ budget, but Congress has so far largely kept
funding flat.)
Anything related to climate change was seen as extremely
vulnerable, he said.
“We were careful,” he explained. “And then it got to the point
where language started to change. No one wanted to say climate change, you
would say climate uncertainty or you would say extreme events. Or you would use
whatever euphemism was available to not draw attention.”
Ziska said there was never a department memo that directed legions
of USDA scientists to be more careful with their language, it was simply well
understood.
The signals to scientists have been subtle but frequent. For
example, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which funnels hundreds
of millions in taxpayer funding to colleges and universities for food and
agriculture research has dropped the term “climate change” from its requests
for applications from scientists. Instead, the agency uses "climate
variability and change."
Other signals came from Perdue or Trump himself, as both have
publicly questioned the scientific consensus on the causes of climate change.
“There was a sense that if the science agreed with the politics,
then the policymakers would consider it to be ‘good science,’ and if it didn’t
agree with the politics, then it was something that was flawed and needed to be
done again,” Ziska said, noting that other scientists are feeling the same
pressures. “That was a sea change in how we viewed our role.”
“We’re not a political agency,” he added. “Our goal is to deal, in
a very pragmatic and very cost-effective way, with some of these issues.”
Ziska told POLITICO he’s concerned that the politicization of
climate science poses a threat to the future of agriculture in the U.S. and
abroad.
"You have farmers who are looking at climate and weather that
they've not seen in their lifetimes,” he said. “It's not your father's climate.
It's changing. What does that mean? Does it mean that I'm screwed, or does it
mean I have an opportunity? ... What does it mean in terms of soil health? What
does it mean in terms of diseases or weeds that might be new to the area.
“This is a fundamental change across all different aspects,” he
added. “To ignore it. To just dismiss it and say ‘oh that's political' ... I
don't have the words to describe that. It's surreal. It feels like something
out of a bad sci-fi movie.”
Ziska’s concerns about the Agriculture Department’s lack of
prioritization of climate research began before Trump took office. There’s been
a slow and steady erosion of the number of scientists dedicated to studying all
the ways that climate change is affecting — and will continue to affect —
agriculture, and even fewer scientists researching what all of this could mean
for human health.
Lewis Ziska told POLITICO he’s concerned that the politicization of
climate science poses a threat to the future of agriculture in the U.S. and
abroad. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO
When Ziska first joined the USDA’s climate stress lab in 1991,
there were about 11 scientists dedicated to studying climate stressors,
including air quality and climate change, in the sprawling Agricultural
Research Service campus in Beltsville, Md. Today, he reckons there are maybe 4
or 5.
Ziska told POLITICO he had been frustrated for several years about
the USDA’s lack of focus and funding for climate-related research, particularly
as scientific authorities have warned the problem is an increasingly urgent one
for humanity, but the rice paper saga was the final straw for him.
Ziska and another leading researcher at USDA, Naomi Fukagawa, who
is the director of USDA’s Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, had
collaborated for more than two years with scientists at the University of Washington,
University of Tokyo, the Chinese Academy of Science, the University of Southern
Queensland, in Australia, and Bryan College of Health Sciences, in Lincoln,
Neb., on what they considered a groundbreaking achievement. The paper looked at
how an atmosphere increasingly rich in carbon dioxide could affect rice, which
some 600 million people rely on for the majority of their calories,
particularly in developing Asian countries.
The study found that rice not only loses protein and minerals,
which confirmed earlier research, but they also for the first time found that
key vitamins can drop.
The journal editors anticipated that the paper would attract
international press interest, so they asked the researchers to have their
institutions help prepare a press packet. USDA officials initially wrote their
own press release to tout the findings, but ended up spiking the release at the
last minute because they said senior officials within ARS had concerns about
the paper, according to emails obtained by POLITICO from one of the study’s
other co-authors.
A communications official went as far as to call the University of
Washington and suggest the university reconsider its plans to promote the
paper.
A USDA spokesperson said department leaders simply disagreed with the
paper’s conclusions.
“The concern was about nutritional claims, not anything relating to
climate change or C02 levels,” the spokesperson said in response to an earlier
POLITICO story outlining the department’s failure to promote climate research.
“The nutrition program leaders at ARS disagreed with the implication in the
paper that 600 million people are at risk of vitamin deficiency. They felt that
the data do not support this.”
The episode was
extremely unusual. The paper had already gone through the typical internal
clearance processes within USDA, a lengthy peer review process, and was set to
be published within a matter of days.
Ziska, in speaking about the episode for the first time, said he
suspected something was seriously wrong after he had rebutted the points raised
by national program leaders and then asked to schedule a meeting to discuss
their concerns, point by point. There was no response, he said.
“That's when it occurred to me,” he said. “This isn't about the
science. It's about something else, but it's not about the science.”
“When that happened, I realized it's not just a question of
language,” he said. “It's not just a question of philosophy. They're saying
we're not going to support this work. And the reason that they're not going to
support the work is because the science doesn't suit their, I don't know, what,
ideology?”
PhilMech readies other agri machineries
August 4, 2019, 10:00 PM
By Madelaine B.Miraflor
Philippine Center for Postharvest
Development and Mechanization (PHilMech) may seem too preoccupied with the
utilization of Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF), but a set of
machinery it developed to boost other high-value commodities like cacao and
coffee are now on its way towards commercialization.
Philmech Chief Science Research
Specialist Rod Estigoy said his agency needed to restructure its office in
order to pave the way for RCEF utilization and at the same time be able to
still fulfill its original mandate, which is to develop machinery to improve
the production not just of the country’s main staple but of all agriculture
products.
PHilMech is one of the government
agencies tasked to utilize bulk of the RCEF, which is the tariff collected from
imported rice, to make Filipino rice farmers competitive amid the entry of more
imported rice into the country.
As part of Republic Act 11203 or
the Rice Tariffication Law, RCEF will be first injected with P10 billion
annually from 2019 to 2024 or a period of six years. Of the P10 billion, P5
billion will be allocated for mechanization of the local rice sector.
So far, DBM has already released
P5 billion to support the program’s mechanization and seed distribution
efforts. Of this, P2.1 billion will go to PhilMech.
Estigoy said the DBM promised to
release the remaining P2.9 billion within the rest of the year.
“That’s what we heard, but I’m
not sure. We should receive P5 billion from RCEF this year,” Estigoy said,
adding that this will be used for extension services and the procurement of
equipment to be distributed to farmers.
At present, Philmech is still
trying to make room for additional manpower and equipment. For an agency used
to handling only P200 million to P300 million budget every year, utilizing a
budget of P5 billion is not going to be an easy task, Philmech Deputy Director
Raul Paz earlier said.
“We restructured our office so we
can focus here [in RCEF],” Estigoy said. “But we’re not letting go of our
R&D [research and development] activities”.
Estigoy said that PhilMech was
recently allowed by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to hire
additional 59 people and is now processing applications to fill these out.
“We will have a new set of people
so they can help us continue [PhilMech’s R&D activities for other
products],” Estigoy said.
The other machinery and equipment
that PhilMech is trying to develop and hoping to commercialize within the year
are meant to boost the country’s production of cacao, coffee, soybean, mango,
and other agriculture products.
Some of the machinery, according
to Estigoy, will be for pilot-testing, commercialization, or for deployment.
For his part, Philippine Chamber
of Agriculture & Food, Inc. (PCAFI) President Danilo V. Fausto said it may
take at least two years for PhilMech to fulfill its new obligation under RCEF
given the agency’s current size.
PhilMech’s mechanization efforts
under RCEF have been facing bureaucratic bottlenecks since March. Aside from
the delayed release of the fund promised to it, procurement process for any
machinery and equipment normally take months. The same goes for the evaluation
of the first batch of beneficiaries.
Based on his rough estimate,
Estigoy said that out of the 2.4 million farmers in the country, only 60,000 to
120,000 farmers will directly benefit from the RCEF next year, but this should
increase further as funds continue to flow through RCEF.
These farmers, according to him,
should be either members of farmers’ cooperatives and irrigators association or
are registered with the DA’s Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture
(RSBSA). All of them should come from 1,200 municipalities within the 57 major
rice producing areas in the country.
“There are a lot of things that
are still being addressed,” Fausto said. “In the meantime, the farmers are
suffering”.
With a farm mechanization level
of only 2.1 horsepower per hectare, the Philippines currently lag behind in
productivity. More than 16 percent of the farmers’ total production goes to
waste due to post-harvest losses.
The cost of producing rice in the
Philippines currently stands at P12.72 per kilo, while it is only P6.22 per
kilo in Vietnam and P8.86 per kilo in Thailand. This is why the rice that are
produced here are more expensive than the rice imported abroad.
If mechanization will not happen
any time soon, local rice farmers will have to keep on bearing the brunt of
falling palay prices amid the surge of cheaper, imported rice into the local
market.
As of the second week of July,
the farmgate price of palay already went down by 17.3 percent from the price of
P21.61/kg last year to P17.86/kg. In some areas in the country, farmers have
sold their yield for as low as P12/kg.
Based on the study of Philmech,
the cost of producing palay in the country can be reduced by P2 to P3 per kilo
through increased mechanization. This can be further reduced if farmers will
adopt higher-yielding rice varieties.
Under RCEF, P3 billion would be
allocated each year up to 2024 for the propagation and distribution of
high-yielding seeds, training, and capacity building of rice farmers. The
agency in charge of this is the Philippine Rice Research Institute.
BSY orders Anna Bhagya review, says scheme misused
Bharath
Joshi, DH
News Service, Bengaluru ,
- Aug
02 2019, 22:12pm ist
- updated:
Aug 02 2019, 22:49pm ist
Anna
Bhagya
Chief Minister B
S Yediyurappa on Friday ordered a comprehensive review of the Anna Bhagya
scheme, a flagship welfare measure launched by the previous Congress government
to provide 7 kg of rice free to every member of a BPL household. “There are an estimated one lakh illegal beneficiaries under the Anna Bhagya scheme in every district,” Yediyurappa told a news conference.
“The scheme should benefit only those who are eligible. But those who are rich, government employees, those with cars and tractors have received benefits illegally,” he said. People with illegal BPL cards have an understanding with local fair price shops. This misuse must be stopped. Not a single eligible beneficiary should be deprived, he said.
Accordingly, all Anna Bhagya beneficiaries will be surveyed to identify the ineligible.
The populist Anna Bhagya was former chief minister Siddaramaiah’s pet scheme aimed at achieving a “hunger-free” Karnataka.
The government has earmarked Rs 3,770 crore for the scheme in 2019-20 fiscal. The scheme requires an estimated 80,000 metric tonnes of rice every month.
Plugging leakage under the scheme will reduce the burden on the government, Yediyurappa said. “We buy the rice from the open market for Rs 32-33 per kg,” he said.
Yediyurappa also said that Anna Bhagya rice stocks lay unused in warehouses for the past 2-3 years. “I have no hesitation to say that rice stocks are rotting. Officials responsible for this situation should face action. I have sought details on the total quantity of rice lying in warehouses, for how long they are stockpiled, why and so on,” he said.
The Anna Bhagya review comes just days after Yediyurappa ordered the cancellation of the Tipu Jayanti, which was another Siddaramaiah initiative.
