THE Department of Agriculture (DA) projects national rice supply is good for 84 days or by the end of June.
“We earlier said we have rice supply for the country, good for 75 days (but) with the implementation of the Plant, Plant, Plant Program, we are optimistic to produce an additional 9-day supply going into the lean months of July to September,” said DA Secretary William Dar.
Dar said for the entire year, rice supply will be sufficient due to the expected harvest from the main wet season crop and import arrivals based on the issued sanitary and phytosanitary import clearances (SPSICs).
By the end of 2020, DA expects a total rice supply of 18 million metric tons (MT) which is 18 percent more than this year’s projected demand of 14.67 million MT of rice.
“At a conservative assumption of 70 percent adoption rate of the Plant, Plant, Plant Program interventions on rice, we can produce an additional 1.3 million MT. Add that to our projected local production and imports with SPSICs of 1.86 million MT, we will have a yearend stock good for more than three months,” Dar claimed.
The DA projects by the end of the year, six regions will not have enough rice supply – Cordillera Administrative Region, National Capital Region, Calabarzon, Central Visayas, Davao Region and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao – but the deficit they will experience will be filled in by 10 regions that will experience surplus.
“Hence, we will pre-position the rice stocks to meet the demands in rice-deficit regions… We won’t tire in appealing to our local executives to help us fight this war against COVID-19 and the threat of hunger to the country,” Dar said.
Meanwhile, the DA is eyeing portions of idle ancestral lands nationwide to be transformed into food production areas, calling on indigenous peoples (IPs) to allow them to transform such properties into vegetable and high-value crop farms.
“Our IPs can also consider going into diversified farming systems, integrating vegetable and livestock raising, that will provide them not only a continuous source of food, but also a source of additional income. We will allot a substantial budget to bankroll the enhanced food production program in ancestral lands,” Dar said.
Citing data from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, in terms of territories, about 7.7 million hectares are occupied by IPs or 26 percent of the country’s total land area of 30 million hectares total.
Meanwhile, as of last year, 243 certificates of ancestral domain titles were issued with a total land area of 5.7 million.
