Farmers Relieved Over Sure Market

FARMERS in the Northern Luzon Region, particularly in the Pangasinan and Ilocos Provinces, have expressed relief and elation that their tobacco leaves will have a sure market this year.

Mario Cabasal, president of the National Federation of Tobacco Growers and Cooperatives (NFTGC), have extended the relief that his co farmers felt, after knowing that Mighty Corporation has committed to buy at least 10 million kilograms of tobacco leaves at an average price of P70 per kilo and buy all the excess tobacco leaves that farmers could not sell to other buyers.

Farmers Relieved Over Sure Market

“We limited to minimum areas fields planted to tobacco last year in anticipation of depressed demand due to the scheduled implementation of the sin tax,” The NFTGC President said.

“Good thing, some farmers were able to sell part of their low-grade harvests to Mighty Corporation in 2013,” Cabasal pointed out.

"Now that we are assured of an alternative market, besides other tobacco companies, our members will again be inspired to devote larger areas to the cultivation of Ilocandia’s most important cash crop,” he added.

Tobacco farmers and growers feared that the tobacco prices and demand for the yellow leaf would nose dive as a result of the new excise tax law on cigarettes, as a result, majority of the growers and farmers in the Ilocos Region shifted to planting yellow corn, the only other profitable crop that thrives in dry land where rainfall is scarce during the summer months, but profits from it is much lower than tobacco leaves.