By Manny Piñol
Murcia, Negros Occidental – The beauty of field visits by officials like me is that we get to see problems first hand and make decisions on the spot.
Early today, Saturday, in a quick weekend trip to Negros Occidental, I visited the Philippine Rice Research Institute station in Murcia town.
I was dismayed to learn during the briefing that the average yield in the 90-plus-hectare experiment area is only 5-metric tons per hectare.
Officials of PhilRice in the station said they have a problem with their water supply and they could hardly plant twice a year.
I frankly told them that the yield they were getting was embarrassing to the Department of Agriculture which is now targetting a national average yield of 6-metric tons per hectare.
After the briefing, I was brought by the staff to a 2.5-hectare impounding dam which is being constructed to supply the farm with water from a river nearby.
The plan is to use a diesel powered engine to pump water from the river.
The problem, the staff said, is that the operation of the pump would be very expensive and it could not fill the huge reservoir.
Right there and then, I instructed Region VI Agriculture Director Remelyn Recoter to source available funds so that a solar-powered irrigation could be established in the area.
The solar-powered irrigation system which was launched by President Rody Duterte in Mlang, North Cotabato last year is now being introduced all over the country.
It is cost efficient and effective since it does not use expensive fossil fuel.
The solar-powered irrigation system for the Murcia PhilRice Station will be constructed this year.
Hopefully, next year, with the improved irrigation services, the PhilRice station will become the center of excellence in rice farming that it should be.
(Photos of the Murcia PhilRice Dam taken by Dr. Nilo Lingaya and Dianne Faith Garcia while photos of the small-scale solar-powered irrigation project in th Western Visayas Agricultural Research Center in Iloilo were taken last week by Mayette Tudlas.)
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