The Department of Agriculture (DA) is optimistic that local production of hog and rice will improve this year, based on data gathered by the agency.
DA Assistant Secretary Arnel de Mesa told reporters in an interview in Quezon City on Wednesday that as of March 14, the number of barangays with active cases of African swine fever (ASF) has gone down to 39 from 66 in February 28.
Data from the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) show the 39 affected barangays are located in 13 provinces namely Abra, Ifugao, Kalinga, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Zambales, Marinduque, Catanduanes, Bohol, Biliran, Leyte, Northern Samar and Surigao del Sur.
“The active participation of all stakeholders and the administration of vaccines helped us in this. Vaccination rate is not yet that high but we focused on areas that had extreme cases of ASF before,” de Mesa said.
He said that 29 hog farms have participated on the vaccination program and 28,000 out of the available 160,000 vaccines have already been administered.
The DA added that only 51 hogs experienced mortalities after receiving vaccinations, a number which the agency is considered low.
“We are waiting for BAI (to) submit a final report but from what I remember, they were requested by (DA) Secretary (Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr.) to (get) a commercial approval from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) by April for these ASF vaccines from Vietnam,” de Mesa said.
Meanwhile, de Mesa said that rice imports that arrived in the country as of March 13 reached around 641,000 metric tons (MT), down by 46.6 percent compared to end-March 2024’s imported rice arrival of around 1.2 million MT.
The agency attributed this to the expected better local palay harvest this year among other factors such as India’s decision to lift its long-standing export restrictions and the Philippines’ implementation of a maximum suggested retail price on imported rice.
“Plus the control of smuggling, hoarding and the stricter monitoring of markets… these factors played a significant role and they say that our needs for imported rice is already becoming predictive which can be manifested in our import data,” de Mesa added.
Earlier, the DA said with better weather and additional input support to farmers, the country may produce a record-high 20.46 million MT of palay this year, 6 percent higher than 2023’s million MT production.
This year’s target palay production is also 1.9 percent higher compared to 2023’s 20.06 million MT, the current record-high for the country.
As for hogs, the agency has no official target production for the year but output has reached 1.7 million MT in 2024, a 5 percent decline from 2023’s 1.79 million MT.
Based on DA’s monitoring of public markets in the National Capital Region, local well-milled rice sold for P40 to P53 per kg on Tuesday while regular milled rice went for P38 to P46 per kg.
Imported well-milled rice was selling for P44 to P46 per kg while the price of imported regular milled rice ranged from P35 to P45 per kg.
Special variety imported rice fetched P52 to P60 and premium rice, P48 to P51.
Special variety local rice was selling for P55 to P62 per kg while premium rice went for P47 to P60 per kg.
For the same period, prevailing price of pork ham ranged from P330 to P410 per kg; pork belly from P370 to P470 per kg; frozen kasim from P220 to P280 per kg; frozen liempo from P290 to P360.
