After declining for the past three years, the Philippines posed a modest rise in most of its agricultural production in the last three months of 2023, the Philippine Statistics Authority reported on Tuesday.

According to the agency's latest data, the production value in agriculture and fisheries grew by 0.7% in the last quarter of 2023, due to recorded positive growth in the production value for crops, livestock, and poultry.

The value of crop production at P290 billion at constant 2018 prices has shown a 0.1 percent slight rise from last year’s same quarter level, which shared 58.7 percent of the production’s total value in agriculture and fisheries.

The biggest increases were seen in the production of cabbage, which rose by 15.5%, sugarcane by 10.5%, mango by 7.6%, and ampalaya by 4.0%.

The value of palay production was 0.2 percent higher, while corn production declined by 1.8 percent.

The value of livestock production, which accounts for 14.6 percent of the total value of production in the agri-fisheries sector and is valued at P72.10 billion at constant 2018 prices, grew by 2.7 percent, noting that hog, the major contributor to livestock production value, climbed by 3.7 percent.

The value of poultry production recorded the highest swell, which amounted to P67.65 billion at constant 2018 prices.

It was registered to have soared by 7.8 percent and accounts for 13.7 percent of the overall total value of production in the agri-fisheries.

The poultry commodities that recorded improvements are chicken up by 8.1%, chicken eggs by 7.8%, duck by 0.6%, and duck eggs up by 0.3%.

Meanwhile, fisheries production, valued at P63.97 billion, shrank by 5.2 percent annually, which contributed 13.0 percent to the distributed value of production.

The biggest decline was in fimbriated sardines (tunsoy) down 34.2%, threadfin bream (bisugo) by 31.6%, blue crab (alimasag) by 31.2%, tiger prawn (sugpo) by 15.4%, and slipmouth (sapsap) by 11.0%.

Overall, the value of crop production last year rose by 2.5%, poultry by 3.8%, while fisheries decreased by 6.5%.