Despite the adverse effects of El Niño drying up several farmlands in the country, the local production of palay and corn increased, according to the National Irrigation Agency.
“There was a PSA [Philippine Statistic Authority] report just recently that says that our production during our El Niño time this first quarter increased despite the fact that the area we planted rice decreased,” said NIA Administrator, Engr. Eduardo Guillen on Tuesday at a Palace press briefing.
“Not only that, our corn production also increased by 5.9 percent, if I'm not mistaken,” he added.
“Yesterday we were in Guimba [Nueva Ecija] for our Harvest Festival, and we saw that one farmer had the lowest harvest there at 12 tons per hectare. This really shows that the yield of our farmers has increased.”
Guillen said that in the NIA-irrigated areas, about 1 percent were unable to be irrigated.
“But we have also been saying that in these tail-end areas of our irrigation facilities—those that we know cannot be irrigated—we planted high-value crops such as corn,” he said.
The NIA official said that the palay yield has had an increment of over 1.1 percent, citing the report from PSA.
Based on PSA’s latest updates on January to March 2024 Palay and Corn Estimates Based on Standing Crop issued on 15 March 2024, “as of 01 February 2024, the estimated palay production based on standing crop for January to March 2024 may increase to 4.83 million metric tons or by 1.1 percent from its actual output of 4.78 million metric tons in the same period of 2023.”
The statistics bureau said that this updated estimate exhibited an increase of 0.6 percent from its estimate of 4.80 million metric tons as of 01 January 2024.
Meanwhile, the estimated corn production based on standing crops for the period January to March 2024 as of 01 February 2024 may increase to 2.67 million metric tons, or 5.9 percent, from its actual estimate of 2.52 million metric tons in the same period of 2023.
This updated estimate of corn production based on standing crops as of the said date indicated a decrease of 0.8 percent from the 2.69 million metric tons recorded estimate as of 1 January 2024.