DA ADJUSTS PLANTING TIME,
EYES TYPHOON-FREE AREAS
By Manny Piñol
The Department of Agriculture (DA) will work with the Local Government Units of typhoon-affected areas of Northern Luzon and the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) to adjust the rice planting calendar and ensure that harvests are done by the second week of September of every year.
The Regional Directors of areas which are not affected by weather disturbances, including those covering the three Samar Provinces, the two Leyte Provinces, Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental, Panay Island, Palawan and Mindoro, were also directed to open 300,000-hectares of new rice farming areas to provide buffer rice production.
I issued these two guidelines on Saturday to all the Regional Directors of the DA who attended the launching of yet another program – the Sorghum Development Program – to ensure greater food production in the country.
The rice planting calendar in Northern Luzon will now be moved a month earlier to ensure that harvests are over by the third week of September, which has now become a typhoon period in the area.
While historically, typhoons would hit Northern Luzon during November to December of every year, there has been a pattern over the last three years when storms would start coming in as early as September.
In 2016, Typhoon Lawin devastated Northern Luzon during the month of October.
This year, Typhoon Ompong, one of the strongest typhoons to hit the country since Yolanda in 2013, devastated Northern Luzon in September causing damage to agriculture worth P26-B.
For rice alone, an estimated 800,000-metric tons of paddy rice was lost to Ompong which was followed by Typhoon Rosita.
The DA had earlier projected a harvest of 19.4-million metric tons for this year, higher by about 120,000-metric tons over the record harvest of 19.28-million metric tons in 2017 but the projection was cut down by 800,000-metric tons to 18.6-mmt because of the typhoon damage.
Under the new planting calendar, the NIA must open the irrigation canals as early as April and May to allow farmers to sow early and harvest before September.
The Regional Directors of Caraga, Davao, Central Mindanao, Northern Mindanao, Zamboanga and the Bangsamoro Region were tasked to identify new areas for rice farming targeting an estimated 300,000-hectares, which is about the same area often hit by typhoons in Northern Luzon.
Farmers in these news areas will be given incentives to shift to rice farming with the introduction of Solar Powered Irrigation System and Small Communal Irrigation Systems, farm machinery and good quality seeds.
(Photos of damaged rice field and fields ready for harvest were downloaded from public websites.)
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