Amid the dreaded impact of El Niño on the country’s farms, AgriNurture Inc. has entered into a partnership with Phoenix Commodities Ltd., one of the world’s top three players in the global rice trading industry.
AgriNurture will distribute rice and fertilizer to meet the self- sufficiency targets of the country, a company statement said.
The Philippines will not be able to meet its rice sufficiency target before the end of the current administration and is aiming to bring in 500 MT of rice.
Due to El Niño which has engulfed 17 provinces mostly in the rice-producing areas in Mindanao, supply from other rice-exporting countries is also expected to decline. The entry of Phoenix-ANI will give rice supply a big boost, the statement said.
ANI is also into hybrid rice seedling production with China‘s biggest agricultural firm Bei Da Huang under a joint venture company.
Phoenix is one of the top 3 players in the global rice trading industry today, trading close to 1,000,000+ tons of rice annually and is now among the top five exporters from India. Its business model is based on upstream integration and is now in the process of duplicating the Basmati experience across other origins of premium rice including Thailand, Vietnam and USA.
At any given time, it has enough inventory to augment part of our country‘s shortage, the company said.
Meanwhile, presidential candidates were urged by a grassroots group to adopt a farm-based program that will ensure protection for local farmers amid the natural disasters brought on by climate change and the prolonged drought caused by El Niño.
The group, Dignidad stresses the need for the new administration to have a clear program of agricultural industrialization if it were to address inequality and achieve genuine development, said the group spokesman Rene Ofreneo, former dean of the school of labor and industrial relations at the University of the Philippines in Diliman.