Agriculture.ph Blog

FIELDS program, plus rainy weather, moves RP closer to rice self-sufficiency

FULL-blast operations of the FIELDS component of the GMA rice program, coupled with abundant rains, are seen to bolster a bumper harvest of rice this coming harvest season, starting next month.

FIELDS stands for Fertilizers, Irrigation and other rural infrastructure, Extension, Education and training for farmers, Loans, Dryers and other post-harvest facilities, and Seeds of the high- yielding varieties. It was launched in April last year when global rice prices started hitting historic highs.

Besides rice, the program covers corn, high-value crops, livestock and fisheries.

Barring any devastating typhoon going the way of four major rice-producing regions in Luzon and the Visayas and an El Niño-triggered drought in the Zamboanga Peninsula, rice harvests this year are seen to meet, if not surpass, the 17.48-million-ton forecast  harvests from 2.66 million hectares planted to rice this year.

This was the assessment made by Agriculture Undersecretary for Operations Jess Paras on the basis of the latest situation report to Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap earlier this week on the aggressive implementation of the FIELDS program in the rice sector by rice program director Frisco Malabanan.

“Based on current planting reports, certified seeds have already exceeded the 2008 wet-season performance and significant production gain is expected in Western Visayas, thus high-yield increment is expected,” Paras said.

There was also a marked increase in areas planted to rice during the main planting season as typhoons Dante, Emong and Feria brought in abundant rain, but made little devastations when they entered the country, he added.

An estimate made by the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics on the total area planted to rice was 2.66 million hectares, much higher than the 1.95 million hectares that yielded 7.4 million metric tons during the dry-season planting in the first half of the year.

Since last year, the DA had made it a major thrust the restoration of irrigation systems that have gone inefficient in past years, the building of postharvest facilities, particularly dryers, and the provision of hybrid-and inbred-rice seed at subsidized price to farmers.

Last year alone, deteriorated irrigation systems providing water to 24,430 hectares were rehabilitated, while totally dysfunctional irrigation canals were restored to irrigate 41,735 hectares. Records for this year on restoration and rehabilitation of old irrigation systems are yet to be consolidated.

Although the FIELDS program covers the whole country, higher incremental harvests on large swats of rice lands have been focused on the five largest rice-producing regions, namely, Central Luzon, the Bicol region, Cagayan Valley, the Ilocos-Pangasinan region and Zamboanga Peninsula.

The five regions supply more than half (60 percent) of the entire rice production in the Philippines.

Written by Jonathan L. Mayuga

Source: Business Mirror