Palay harvest seen to reach DA target of 7.3 million MT

The Bureau of Agricultural Statistics has estimated actual palay production for the dry season to amount to seven million metric tons, according to Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap.

Following a meeting with rice millers and grains traders, Yap said that preliminary figures already indicate that some 6.85 million MT have already been harvested, putting the Agriculture Department well in sight in meeting its 7.3 million MT target production.

Even so, Yap said the DA is bent on further raising palay yields, particularly in the country’s top 10 palay-growing provinces which account for almost half of the national output.

To sustain and even boost the high yields in most provinces, Yap said the DA would  expand its intervention programs under the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (GMA) Rice Program, especially in the top palay-growing.

Nueva Ecija tops the list of provinces with the highest palay yield last year, followed by Isabela, Pangasinan, Iloilo, Cagayan, Leyte, Camarines Sur, Tarlac, North Cotabato and Maguindanao.

Nueva Ecija produced 1.356 million MT of rice in 2007; Isabela, 1.036 million MT; Pangasinan, 1.011 million MT; Iloilo, 823,376 MT; Cagayan, 702,561 MT; Leyte, 582,840 MT; Camarines Sur, 560,809 MT; Tarlac, 557,943 MT; North Cotabato, 449,202 MT; and Maguindanao, 433,766 MT.

The leading palay producers accounted for 46.2 percent of the total national rice output in 2007, according to Frisco Malabanan, the national coordinator of the GMA-Rice Program.

Palay production totaled 16.24 million MT in 2007 and is expected to reach another peak of 17.32 million MT this year, with 40 percent or 7.1 million MT already expected to be harvested this dry season.

Malabanan said the DA would carry out the following intervention measures this year under the GMA Rice Program.

• Expansion of areas planted with hybrid seeds and certified seeds, coupled with location-specific measures such as farm inputs like Bio-N, zinc sulfate and other soil ameliorants;

• Restoration of irrigation facilities;

• Provision of post-harvest drying facilities;

• Planting of certified seeds in 600,000 hectares of rain-fed lowlands and low-yielding irrigated areas, which will focus on the priority provinces covered by the President’s Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program (AHMP);

• Third cropping season under the quick turnaround (QTA) program to cover 92,000-100,000 hectares of fully irrigated areas using hybrid and inbred certified seeds; and

• Planting of hybrids and inbred certified seeds in restored and newly third cropping season under the quick turnaround program to cover 100,000 hectares of fully irrigated areas using hybrid and inbred certified seeds.

Yap earlier bared plans to embark on a subsidy program to encourage farmers to plant hybrid seeds and use more fertilizers, particularly the organic types.

Hybrid seeds cost more but produce an average of six to seven MT per hectare as against the per-hectare average of 4.5 tons for certified seeds.

The use of more hybrid seeds and fertilizers was among the initial recommendations of the Eminent Persons Group, an advisory group comprising ex-DA secretaries and other farm experts that Yap created recently to help oversee the implementation of FIELDS.

FIELDS is the P43.7-billion program for massive crop production that President Arroyo laid out at the National Food Summit last April 4. It stands for Fertilizers, Irrigation, Extension and Education, Loans, Dryers and Seeds.

Yap said a food production masterplan is being drawn up by the DA with experts from the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) and the University of the Philippines in Los Baños (UPLB) along with the Eminent Persons Group.