ILOILO – The Provincial Agriculture Office (PAO) remained confident the province would hit its target rice production of one million metric tons this year despite delays in rice planting.
According to PAO chief Ildefonso Toledo, it was only this week when most farmers started planting rice.
Inclement weather these past two weeks prevented farmers from working on their fields, he said.
As practiced in previous years, Toledo said, farmers usually started preparing their rice fields on the last week of May, then plant either on June or July.
But citing the trend of past yields, he remained positive of bigger harvests. In 2016, he said, the province produced between 800 thousand to 900 thousand metric tons of rice.
Toledo said 74,000 hectares of rice fields in Iloilo are rain-fed and 56,000 hectares irrigated.
PAO is continuously extending assistance to farmers. Among others, said Toledo, it distributes rice seedlings.
Toledo said PAO was still waiting for the reports of its technical field personnel to determine how many percent of rice farmers in the province have started planting.
NO NFA RICE SHORTAGE
The National Food Authority (NFA), meanwhile, has enough stocks of rice for the province, according to the agency’s Iloilo manager Oliver Cambas.
The 47,000 bags of rice at the NFA warehouse could last until October, he said.
By then, the additional 120,000 bags of imported rice that the government procured would have arrived so Iloilo’s rice supply is assured, stressed Cambas.
Late last month, a total of 80,000 sacks of rice from Thailand were delivered to NFA Region 6. These were part of the Philippine government’s procurement of 250,000 metric tons of imported rice.
Western Visayas was actually allotted 8,000 metric tons. The 80,000 sacks were just an initial shipment.
Of the 80,000 initial bags of rice, 56,000 bags were allotted to Iloilo.
Capiz got 10,000 bags; Antique, 10,000 bags; and Aklan, 4,000 bags.
According to Cambas, on July 3 NFA started releasing rice to its 170 accredited Iloilo grains retailers – around 20 bags every week.
The price of NFA rice is P27 per kilo, said Cambas.
This is way affordable than commercial rice priced at an average of P45 per kilo.
Cambas assured the public that NFA is making sure no unscrupulous traders would pass NFA rice off as commercial rice.
There have been reports that some traders mix NFA rice with commercial rice and sell this at higher prices.
Cambas said other agencies monitoring rice prices in the market are the Department of Agriculture, Department of Trade and Industry, Office of the President, and Philippine National Police./PN
