The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Rose Marie de la Cruz
I don’t blame AgriSpecialist Inc., a legitimate and massive investor in a biofertilizer plant, a cheap but technically and scientifically- tested product, for looking to export its product to the Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and other markets for its field-vetted soil rejuvenator in view of decades long use of urea and other fossil-fuel based chemical fertilizer.
What with all the wastage ASI suffered while waiting for its certificate of product registration (CPR) from the Fertilizer and Pesticides Authority of over six months. When it finally got the chance to bid (the process of which is ongoing for the dry season planting) it had to scrounge after the leftovers that were not given to backyard “manufacturers.”
ASI is looking at these markets, particularly Vietnam market, principal supplier of rice to the Philippines, which has been scouting for biofertilizer suppliers in the world market, since the world is going green aiming for farming sustainability. Biofertilizer is thus a sunshine industry.
The multi-million peso ASI plant in Sta. Rosa, Laguna was made to undergo several procedures, documentation requirements (that in the end were unnecessary) and severe delays in the issuance of its CPR by past administrations of the FPA, obviously under orders from higher-ups of the Department of Agriculture main office. All told, ASI waited 6.5 months to get renewal of its CPR, leading to the expiration of many of its products.
Had their products been given the permit earlier, the rice farmers could have enjoyed using biofertilizers that would have cost them P500 per hectare as against over P1,500 per bag of urea (at least 2 bags of urea are needed per hectare to improve yields). This alone jacks up the production cost of farmers plus the production loan and interest thereof that they get from loan sharks and rice traders, who collect their palay at harvest. In the end, farmers practically end up with nothing.
After getting its CPR last January 31, 2025, it earnestly bidded for a share of the P2 billion budget under the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF), only to find out that local manufacturers (whose products are not field-validated and technologically -untested) have gotten even bigger share of the RCEF budget pre-allotted by DA to parties close to them.
The 13 regional field offices have to deploy parts of the budget to the cities and municipalities (C&Ms) under them, and the C&M agriculturists distribute their stocks to farmers recognized and patronized by the LGUs.
This long rigmarole thus deprives the legitimate farmers of their chance to use in their farms this soil rejuvenator, which would allow them substantial savings otherwise spent on toxic chemical fertilizers.
ASI’s fieldmen, who are now wooing agriculturists to be given a chance to distribute and sell their quality products directly to farmers have been discovering that “favored” backyard suppliers of mislabeled biofertilizers have cornered most of the diminutive budget or scraps.
Some of these biofertilizers are being passed off as such, even though their ingredient or nutritional content are merely organic (manure), humus or fungus or even uni-celled bacterium.