IN effort to encourage farmers to plant more palay and help to attain the government’s self-sufficiency targets, the Department of Agriculture (DA) has started with the operations of the P142-million rice processing complex (RPC) in Pangasinan.
Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said that the Sta. Barbara RPC would benefit more than 200,000 rice farmers in Pangasinan and adjacent areas, allowing them to market their milled rice to high-end markets—at higher prices for premium grains.

“Farmers in Pangasinan could now aspire to sell their milled rice to the high-end markets like malls, supermarkets and fast food chain companies because the newly-opened RPC in the province is one of the most modern facilities for rice processing in the Philippines,” Alcala said.

In line with this, the DA chief encouraged farmers to plant more palay and to choose “long grain” varieties, which is sought by the high-end market, and can be processed by the modern machinery of the RPC.

He also said that newly threshed palay that would be dried and milled at the RPC will be of better quality, saying that grain deterioration—such as germination and discoloration—can now be avoided.
Pangasinan ranks third among the top rice producing provinces in the country, next to Nueva Ecija and Isabela.

The Sta. Barbara RPC is a project of the Korean International Cooperation Agency (Koica) and the DA-Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization (PhilMech), together with the provincial government of Pangasinan. It houses five mechanical dryers, warehouse, and multi-pass rice milling facilities for brown rice and well-milled rice.

The rice facility can dry 50,000 kilograms of wet paddy in a day and can mill 2.5 metric tons of palay a day. It has a storage capacity of 1,100 metric tons.

Koica Philippines resident representative Kim Jinoh said that the RPC aims to produce high-quality rice and reduce postharvest losses. Freshly threshed palay can also be directly sold to the RPC.

“We believe that our RPC project will help to achieve the vision of the Philippine development plan 2011-2016 for competitive, sustainable, and technology-based agriculture sector that contributes to inclusive growth and poverty reduction,” he said.