TACLOBAN CITY — The Department of Agriculture regional office here announced that it is preparing all available rice seeds to replace those planted crops washed out by the recent massive floods in Northern Samar.

DA Eastern Visayas regional executive director Andrew Orais disclosed that aside from doing an inventory of current available seeds in the region, it already asked for replacement stocks from the Philippine Rice Research Institute and other DA regional offices if farmers would need more.

"We are ready with our support, but we are just waiting for a go signal from the provincial agriculture office since the post-disaster damage assessment is going on," Orais said in an online interview.

As of the end of November, the DA regional office has 2,000 bags of rice seeds, 920 bags of registered rice seeds, and 437 bags of hybrid rice seeds. The field office also has inventories of corn seeds, assorted vegetable seeds, cassava cuttings and native chicken.

The DA reported last week that damage and losses to agriculture due to the massive floods in Samar provinces on 21 to 22 November have reached P104.96 million.

The weather disturbances have affected 4,571 farmers tilling 2,751 hectares of land in three Samar provinces.

Rice posted the biggest losses at P84.50 million, followed by high-value crops at P9.21 million, bananas at P3.91 million, livestock at P2.48 million and corn at P1.29 million.