Palay traders offer a higher buying price in Antique as some farmers are having an early harvest.

Office of the Provincial Agriculturist (OPA) assistant department head Dr. Gina Jordan said the buying price ranges from PHP20 per kilogram for newly harvested palay to PHP24 per kilogram for dry.

She said in the previous months, traders only offered PHP11 to PHP19 per kilogram.

“The higher buying price is advantageous for the farmers to earn more,” she said in an interview Monday.

The limited harvest is one of the reasons for the higher price. The peak harvest period for the first cropping is from September to October.

As of July 31, OPA recorded 38,734.65 hectares of standing crops; 947.24 hectares were already harvested or up for harvest this August.

Some 7,984.29 hectares are also in their reproductive stage, 20,280.81 in the vegetative stage, and 9,522.31 hectares in seedling stage.

“We have right now a rice production of 3,448.76 metric tons with an average yield of 4.25 metric tons per hectare on farms that have already harvested,” Jordan said.

She said the Department of Agriculture, through the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund, had been a big help to the 20,620 farmer-beneficiaries.

Some 42,823 bags of palay seeds were distributed starting February this year, in time for the first cropping period from March to October.

Each of the farmer-beneficiaries received one bag for a hectare of farmland. (PNA)