Inclement weather is the major factor that may hinder the Philippines from achieving its goal of having at least 95% rice sufficiency by 2028, according to the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice).
"In terms of production, we are doing everything we can to support our farmers. Our real enemy is when the weather is really bad," director of the PhilRice Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund Program Management Office Dr. Flordeliza Bordey, told DAILY TRIBUNE.
"An example of this is El Niño and La Niña, the occurrences of extreme typhoons," she added, saying that the government is hoping that their implemented strategies will work.
Bordey added that the Department of Agriculture (DA) is continuously crafting solutions to mitigate the adverse effects of extreme weather, such as making strategic adjustments to their planting calendars.
"We also have external facts to look at. For example, the wars. The Russia-Ukraine war affected the supply chains of our inputs, like fertilizers, which became expensive. Those things that we don't expect are the factors that can have an effect on our target sufficiency," she said.
The PhilRice official further explained that the increasing local demand is also crucial to achieving the 95 percent rice sufficiency goal by 2028.
"Supply is one side, but demand is also equally important to food sufficiency. The ballooning population. The growth of per capita consumption – we are looking at that. The wastages. That's what we are balancing – that we are not only looking at the production side but also the demand side as well," Bordey said.
"Maybe ten years ago, we saw the per capita [consumption of] 120 kilograms per person per year, so the recent data we see seems to have reached 130 plus [kilograms]," she added.
The latest data from the DA shows that agri-damage in the country due to the continuing onslaught of El Niño is now at P2.63 billion with a volume loss of 116,792 metric tons.
Bordey, however, said that the affected farms reported to be El Niño-hit are not all crop areas of palay.
"We have made some strategies to escape the problem of El Niño. In our distribution of rice seeds, we have really selected drought-tolerant varieties, the ones that are really suitable for rain-fed areas that have a lack of water," she said.
"Another characteristic of the seeds we distributed were early-maturing varieties. This means that they are harvested faster so they can escape from the extremely hot weather," Bordey added.