The Philippines’ agriculture sector has survived a volcano eruption that blanketed tons of farm yield with ashes and sustained production within three quarters into the pandemic, but it only took three typhoons to expose its vulnerability.
And Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) National Manager Raul Montemayor has one piece of advice to the government, which is to focus on helping farmers and fishermen recover.
“We need to help the farmers first,” Montemayor said in a text exchange, referring to the damage that the recent typhoons, especially Rolly and Ulysses, caused in the lives of poor agriculture stakeholders.
The government estimates that the agriculture sector lost more than P16 billion of production due to Quinta, Rolly, and Ulysses, which struck the country in the span of three weeks in November.
This doesn’t include yet the damages incurred during the typhoons that happened before and after these three typhoons.
Last week, Tropical Storm Vicky incurred last-minute damages to the agriculture sector of Visayas for this year, also resulting in hundreds of millions worth of production losses.
“Our farmers and fishers remain in the recovery stage. In the aftermath of every natural disaster, our mandate [at the Department of Agriculture] is to assure food production for the profitability of farmers and well-being of consumers,” Agriculture Secretary William Dar said in the agency’s year-end virtual press briefing.
“We continue to distribute assistance to farmers and interventions for them to recover and re-start their livelihood,” he added.
For Dar, however, COVID-19 is still the biggest challenge that the agriculture sector has faced, aside from Taal Volcano eruption, the spread of African Swine Fever (ASF), and the aforementioned typhoons.
‘Santacruzan of typhoons’
Just when things couldn’t get any worse, the agriculture sector still had to keep on incurring damages two weeks before the year ended, thanks to Typhoon Vicky which hit parts of Visayas on December 18.
Vicky is the 22nd tropical cyclone to hit the Philippines for this year, exceeding the average of 20 typhoons the country records in a year.
Glenn B. Gregorio, director of Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), pointed out the true cost of the typhoons’ wrath to the country’s agriculture sector, especially Ulysses, includes both the short- and long-term impacts.
Ulysses, which made landfall in Quezon province on November 11, is the deadliest typhoon to hit the Philippines in 2020.
“Remember that the impact of the typhoon is not just incurred during and immediately after a typhoon’s departure,” Gregorio said.
“It is the latter [long-term impacts] that must also be given due attention if we are to be wiser in how to build back better sooner,” he added.
According to him, recovery efforts especially in the rice farming communities in Cagayan Valley, which was badly hit by Ulysses and Vicky, would require a substantial financial stimulus to afford the farmers the necessary capital to bounce back.
The immediate response would mean the adoption of a highly adaptable set of integrated technological interventions for the agriculture sector, he said.
To recall, Gregorio was one of the first people who said that in terms of production, it’s now impossible for the agriculture sector to recover from the losses it incurred from the last three typhoons.
To be specific, he said that crop production, which was the farm sector’s largest contributor from January to September, is now expected to contract, resulting in a “high chance for the agriculture sector posting a negative growth”.
“It is important to take note that among the major economic sectors of the country, it is only the agriculture sector that has managed to achieve a positive growth since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was praying that this is sustained for the rest of the year to show how resilient the agriculture sector is, until the back-to-back typhoons this November happened,” Gregorio said.
“It should be noted that the positive 0.7 percent growth of the agriculture sector in the third quarter of 2020 is largely due to the production of favorable crops, particularly rice and corn. However, crop production systems are highly vulnerable to typhoons that have been increasing both in intensity and frequency,” he added.
Moving forward, he said that as the country remains to be vulnerable to typhoons year in and year out, a systemic future-proofing intervention is surely needed and enabled by a transformative level of innovations necessary to make it operational and sustainable.
Agri growth performance
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed that from July to September, the farm sector’s production crawled to a growth of 0.7 percent, which is way slower compared to the 2.3 percent growth it had in the same period in 2019.
From January to September, the sector declined by 0.2 percent, coming from a 0.4 percent growth during the same period last year.
Despite the slower growth, Dar said he is “delighted to know that the country’s agriculture sector once again performed positively during the third quarter of the year”.
This, according to him, happened despite the combined effects of the community lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic and severe weather conditions during the months of July to September.
He also said the bad performance of hog and poultry sectors, which pulled the sector’s growth lower, was expected due to the lingering effects of the African Swine Fever (ASF) and low demand for poultry products, respectively.
The other week, the DA officially dropped its target palay production for the year, admitting that the country’s annual output for unhusked rice will no longer reach 20 million metric tons (MT).
For the last quarter of 2020, rice production is expected to reach 7.42 million MT, bringing this year’s total palay output to only 19.32 million MT, according to DA National Rice Program (NRP) Lead Assistant Secretary Andrew Villacorta.
While this is 2.7 percent more than the total harvest of 18.8 million MT in 2019, this will be lower than the 20.34 million MT of play the DA was expecting the country will produce for this year.
This is also much lower than the agency’s previous production target of as much as 22.12 million MT, which is equivalent to 13.51 million MT of rice.
“The rice sector has been doing well amid the pandemic. For the first three quarters, rice production reached 11.9 million MT, exceeding initial expectations. But then, the typhoons hit, affecting our major rice-producing provinces,” Dar said.
“Due to a series of typhoons, we lost about 322,041 metric tons of palay, which is roughly equivalent to an eight-day rice supply. Hence, our adequacy level is about 90 to 91 percent. Let us wait for the fourth quarter palay production output,” he added.
For the first two quarters of next year, the DA targets rice production to be around 9.02 million MT from an aggregate of 1.149 million hectares nationwide.
For the entire 2021, the DA eyes an initial target of 20.48 million MT of palay.
Such growth, according to DA, will be driven by three major rice initiatives, including the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF), which provides a total of P10 billion annually; regular national rice program, focusing on hybrids; and the expanded RCEF program, covering additional areas for inbred rice production.
Dar said the DA will optimize the use of both quality inbred and hybrid seeds for rainfed and irrigated areas nationwide, and improve efficiency in the allocation and distribution of the P10-billion RCEF for farm machinery, inbred rice seeds, credit, training, and extension.
Further, he said the DA will strongly promote rice varieties preferred by consumers to provide farmers higher incomes.
Moving forward, the Department will also intensify the promotion of climate resiliency programs among rice farmers to reduce crop losses during typhoons.
“This is where the AMIA [Adaptation and Mitigation Initiative on Agriculture] will come into play. We will be piloting more AMIA villages in the regions, provinces, and towns to enable local communities to manage climate risks while pursuing sustainable livelihood vision climate-resilient agriculture,” Dar said.
AMIA is the flagship program of DA for climate change adaptation and mitigation