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THE
Department of Agriculture (DA), owing to the
near-drought conditions, is tempering its projection of
a 4-percent to 5-percent increase for the farm sector
this year, but did not give any new specific growth
percentages.
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said that achieving its
original growth target this year would be “difficult. .
. . Based on what we are seeing right now, it would be
much harder for us to reach the target.”
The
National Economic and Development Authority (Neda)
earlier said its growth target of 3.9 percent for the
farm sector this year would hold, given projections that
rice and corn production would continue to grow. Whether
it has revised its view of the situation was not
immediately known.
Yap said
a complete assessment on the impact of the drought,
especially in
Luzon, may be completed by October or November. Preliminary data
indicate that four regions were hardest hit—the Ilocos
Region,
Cagayan
Valley, Central Luzon and Bicol.
Among
the main crops in the Ilocos Region and Cagayan Valley
are rice and corn. Central Luzon, known as the rice
granary of the Philippines, has palay, while the Bicol
region is a major producer of coconut.
Yap said
they are looking for additional areas where palay could
be grown to alleviate the shortfall in harvests in the
affected rice farming areas. Earlier, he mentioned the
Visayas and Mindanao as the most viable areas to take up
the expected slack in
Luzon production.
The
department had projected earlier that in a worst-case
scenario of a dry spell lasting until the end of the
year for
Luzon, palay production would only grow by 1.5 percent to 2
percent, and corn by 2.5 percent to 3 percent this year.
Rice and
corn are the main crops that buoy the growth of the
crops subsector, which accounted for almost half of farm
sector production in 2006. |
