HOUSE Committee on Agriculture and Food Vice Chairman Luis Raymund “LRay” Villafuerte said on Monday that the revival of the Masagana 99 program will serve as the cornerstone of the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) plan to plant higheryielding hybrid seeds on 1.5 million hectares of land this dry season.

In order to help President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. achieve his goal of lowering the price of rice to as little as P20 per kilo, Villafuerte said that significantly higher palay (unhusked rice) yields from a revived Masagana program will boost the market supply of rice, resulting in lower retail cost.

“The DA’s new strategy to significantly boost palay yields and meet President Marcos’ goal of attaining rice self-sufficiency in two years’ time should clear the way for the revival of the Masagana 99 program, which our Chief Executive’s father launched in 1973 to address a then-nationwide rice shortage,” Villafuerte said.

Masagana 99 was a farming initiative started by former president Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. to boost rice production among local farmers. The Philippines achieved selfsufficiency in 1975-1976 and began exporting rice to nearby Asian nations in 1977-1978.

Its objective was to increase the Philippines’ average palay crop output from 40 cavan (a unit of measurement equal to 60 kilos of rice) per hectare to 99 cavan per hectare to increase the country’s rice selfsufficiency. The project encouraged farmers to employ cutting-edge equipment, such as high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, affordable fertilizer and herbicides.

“However, with the average yield of big producers like China at about 6.5 metric tons per hectare, the target of the proposed Masagana redux is to produce at least 129 cavan per hectare instead of 99 cavan,” Villafuerte said.

“Higher palay yields will boost domestic supply of the staple, eventually pulling down its market rate to possibly as low as P20 a kilo as hoped for by the President,” he added.

Villafuerte said that President Marcos Jr. might learn from his father’s example.

He also urged the Marcos Jr. government to focus on value-added processing of agricultural products by setting up at least one major FTI in every region, with production, marketing and trading focused on the major farm goods in each region to significantly increase productivity and increase farmers’ incomes.