Agri damage placed at P100M

MANILA, Philippines - The value agricultural assets damaged by tropical storm “Ofel” has been placed at P100 million, according to Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala.

“The effect of the storm is minimal and will not affect our projections,” he said in an interview with radio station dwIZ over the weekend.

Half of the value of crop damages comprised damages to palay.

Damage to palay caused by the onslaught of tropical storm Ofel has been placed at P49.5 million covering 3,419 hectares with production loss of about 12, 992 metric tons.

Agriculture assistant secretary and rice program coordinator Dante Delima  said most of the affected rice lands (3,161 hectares) were in the province of Leyte.

Ofel battered the provinces of Leyte, Mindoro, Cebu, Sarangani, Romblon, Marinduque, Bicol and other nearby provinces.

Delima believes the damage inflicted on palay would not significantly affect palay production target for the fourth quarter.

Alcala remains optimistic that rice farmers who participated in the third cropping scheme would still have a good harvest in December.

Third cropping for the year started last month, with the aim of recovering production loses caused by typhoons Ferdie, Gener and the southwest monsoon that dumped torrential rains over rice producing regions in July and August.

Based on farmers’ planting intentions, third quarter palay output is expected to reach 3.56 million MT, 12 percent higher than last year’s output of 3.17 million MT but Delima said growth could be lower for the quarter because of the weather disturbances.

For the fourth quarter, palay production is seen to reach 6.36 million MT, seven percent higher than last year’s output of 5.94 million MT.

During the second quarter of the year, palay production was placed at 3.9 million MT, up 10 percent from 3.54 million in the same period in 2011. This was because of the early cropping scheme implemented by the DA during the dry season to prevent crop damage during the typhoon season.

In the first quarter of 2012, palay production declined by 1.12 percent to 3.99 million MT from the same period a year ago because of delayed planting in some provinces like Cagayan and Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao as a result of continuous rains.

The DA has a palay production target of 18.46 million MT for the whole of 2012 but is setting a conservative target of 17.8 million MT which is 6.7 percent higher than the harvest of 16.68 million MT in the same period last year.