BACOLOD CITY – AMID rising prices of food and other basic items, government intervention is needed to help – but not burden – farmers and sugar millers, former Sen. Panfilo “Ping” M. Lacson stressed Friday.

Lacson called for more interventions like those done by some local government units (LGUs) of buying crops from farmers at higher prices than those offered by middlemen and traders.

“The government must intervene the right way if the sugar industry, particularly the millers, face a crisis… The intervention must be to help and not burden them,” he said in Filipino in an interview with Bombo Radyo Bacolod here.

He cited as an example of the right intervention the case of Davao del Norte, where the LGU buys crops from farmers at higher prices than the middlemen, and sells the produce to consumers.

“This helps the consumers because they can buy produce at lower prices. And this helps the farmers because they can sell their produce at higher prices,” he said in Filipino, in an interview on Dumaguete-based radio station DYGB.

Lacson earlier said he is studying legislation to institutionalize the Kadiwa store system, which jibes with such farm-to-market intervention.

But Lacson also pushed for fewer government interventions that burden farmers, like allowing the importation of sugar and other agricultural products.

“We allow onions and garlic to rot then we throw them away. Then we import the same commodities. Isn’t that ridiculous?” he added.

He also scored the issuance of permits by the Sugar Regulatory Administration to import sugar during milling season.

He said it was good that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had government buy milled sugar at a good price.

“This should be the role of government – to intervene not in favor of importers but our farmers and millers. Sometimes we cannot understand our regulatory bodies whose intervention turns out to do more harm than good to the industry,” he said.

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Ryan Ponce Pacpaco