Rice harvest set in Rizal Park

MANILA, Philippines - Elementary and high school students will harvest rice in a ceremony in Rizal Park on Friday to mark 2013 as the National Year of Rice and November as Rice Awareness Month, according to the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice).

As in previous years, the ceremonial harvest at the park’s 300-square meter terraced Rice Garden – located across the Manila Hotel – is to create, promote, enhance, and sustain rice awareness among the people, particularly the young. The garden is open to the public.

“The advocacy campaign aims to highlight the need for everybody’s help is achieving rice self-sufficiency,” PhilRice said.

Among the invited guests are Department of Education officials led by Secretary Armin Luistro, Department of Agriculture (DA) officials headed by Secretary Proceso Alcala, Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada, Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and executive director Juliet Villegas of the National Parks Development Committee (NPDC).

The rice garden is “a simulated field showing actual rice plants of traditional and modern varieties at different growth stages, for the different rice-growing environments and for various consumers’ needs and preferences,” PhilRice director Eufemio Rasco Jr. said.

Tended year-round by DA-PhilRice Los Baños station, the rice garden was set up in 2001 by PhilRice, NPDC, DA-Bureau of Plant Industry, Asia Rice Foundation, and the Philippine Commission for the New Century and the Millennium.