Amidst the current spike of the price of rice, members of the Grains Monitoring Team (GMT) in Caraga Region is eyeing strategies to empower consumers and farmers.

Melody Guimary, corn program coordinator of the Department of Agriculture Caraga said that rice is not the only source of carbohydrates but to include other food staples such as banana, root crops, and corn.

“It is high time that people should try to explore other food sources such as corn grits, ” Guimary said.

She said that DA is currently campaigning for the consumers to include corn in their table through Rice Corn Blend (RCB).

“On their preference ratio, consumers may mix corn and rice to lessen the cost of food in the family since price of corn is lower than rice to almost double, thus extending the value of peso ” Guimary explained.

She also said that DA is aiming to boost production of the flint type white corn through the establishment of model farms currently at Las Nieves and Prosperidad, Agusan del Sur.

Aside from production, DA is also embarking for aggressive marketing through establishing local processors to engage in processing and blending of rice and corn for convenient access of the consumers,” she said.

Rice and corn might be blended based on consumer preference such as 70:30, 50:50 or it can be 100% pure corn.

“One of the strategies to boost corn production in the region for human consumption is establishing corn processing equipment along side with the established Rice Processing Complex (RPC) so that RPC could not only process rice but to include corn, ” Guimary added.

Marissa Garces, rice program coordinator said that cooperators of RPC in the region, are currently capacitated to be agricultural traders.

“We are helping our RPC farmer cooperators through training not only to process rice but to engage in trading, with the provision of the needed equipment and capitalization so they can start buying the rice produced within the community, processed and sold it at a much lower price, ” Garces explained.

In Caraga Region, there are six RPC’s who are fully operational, two for testing, and seven on going-construction.

GMT is a multi-sectoral body composed of members both from government and private.