Farm losses from ‘Ondoy,’ ‘Pepeng’ climb to P18.4B

14 October 2009

http://businessmirror.com.ph/home/top-news/17242-farm-losses-from-ondoy-pepeng-climb-to-p184b.html

EVERY time Luzon is clobbered by typhoons, it is the farm sector that gets it right on the chin, with rice farming as a major casualty. With Tropical Storm Ondoy and Typhoon Pepeng coming on the heels of each other, farm losses have so far amounted to P18.4 billion, according to the Department of Agriculture (DA).

Of that amount, Pepeng denied the country rice, corn and other farm produce the hefty sum of P11.7 billion. The remaining P5.6 billion was mostly urban losses from Ondoy, but the full figure for the losses from both storms has yet to be determined.

The rice sector lost production valued at P14.4 billion, or almost 80 percent of the amount of damage incurred by the entire farm sector.

“Rice farms with no chance of recovery will be rehabilitated with the DA providing seeds and other inputs, as soon as the farmers are ready to replant their damaged farms,” said Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap in a statement.

Department data showed that Pepeng impaired 264,308 hectares planted to palay, of which 69,315 hectares of palay were destroyed, for a total 528,179 tons of palay gone.

Losses in palay production occurred in 21 provinces of the Cordillera Autonomous Region, Cagayan Valley and Central Luzon, and three provinces of Ilocos and two of Bicol.

Palay harvest lost to the two storms represent 13 percent of the anticipated produce from the main cropping season or the last quarter of the year. 
For corn, the storms caused a total production loss of 45,768 tons valued at P625 million or about 3.27 percent of the targeted production for the fourth quarter of the year.

The high-value commercial crop sector, including the highland vegetables of Benguet, lost P402 million so far; while the fishery sector in Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog lost P211 million from Ondoy, which ruined 8,365 hectares of milkfish, tilapia and prawn aquaculture farms.

The planting of crops in the coming months is expected to encounter another problem as a result of the widespread destruction caused by the storms—whether some P2.75 billion worth of irrigation facilities could be rehabilitated in time. The farm infrastructure services a total of 231,666 hectares in the entire Central Luzon, Ilocos and Cagayan Valley regions.

Meanwhile, the nongovernment organization Rice Watch and Action Network (R1) urged the House of Representatives to allocate P830 million from the 2010 budget of the DA for social protection to help farmers cope and recover.

“The lessons of devastations brought about by the last two typhoons especially Pepeng are clear markings on the walls both for the government and the Filipinos’ capacity to respond to the threats of climate change,” said R1 lead convenor Jessica Reyes-Cantos.

“The poor farmers will always be helpless victims unless the government prioritizes social protection for the farmers,” she added. J.A. Ng

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