Contingency plans vs. El Niño

CEBU, Philippines –  Department of Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap has directed all DA officials in charge of the various commodities like palay and corn to draw up contingency plans in preparation for the looming El Niño phenomenon next year.

Yap gave this order to the heads of the different Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (GMA) programs during the recent Management Committee (ManCom) meeting at the DA central office in Quezon City.

“The heads of the various commodity groups will have to craft their respective contingency plans designed to mitigate the adverse impact of El Niño on next year’s harvests,” Yap said.

His directive followed last week’s forecast by the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) that another round of El Niño will likely hit the country next year and adversely affect farm production.

El Niño is a weather phenomenon characterized by a prolonged dry spell.

Yap said the funding for these contingency plans will have to be incorporated in the DA’s proposed budget for 2010.

In connection with the DA plan, Yap bared plans to invite Pagasa officials to the next ManCom meeting so the commodity group heads could find out how severe the coming El Niño is and how it will impact on next year’s agricultural production.

Earlier, Yap said the DA is streamlining its budget program this year and in 2010 to ensure that a lion’s share of DA funds goes to funding programs meant for the country to attain food security and sufficiency in the medium term despite challenges such as climate change and globalized trade.

Yap also said these officials should find out if there is a correlation between the expansion or contraction of each sub-sector under their supervision and the funds that their offices have spent in the past years.

This evaluation, Yap said, will help the department find out if the growth of a sub-sector or industry is private-sector led, or if it is vulnerable enough to merit full government support in terms of funding and resources, particularly this year and in 2010.

Yap said that once the DA makes this evaluation, its funding proposal for its programs next year has to fulfill “the fundamental objective of food security and sufficiency, taking into consideration the realities of a globalized trading order and climate change.”

Undersecretary Bernie Fondevilla said that import tariffs on agricultural commodities are set to go down next year as part of the Philippines ’ commitments under the Common Effective Preferential Tariff Scheme for the Asean Free Trade Area or (CEPT-AFTA), while climate change has spawned freak weather patterns now upsetting planting seasons and hurting crop yields. – THE FREEMAN