ILOILO – This province produced 297,109.95 metric tons of palay (unhusked rice) from January to March this year, reported the Provincial Agriculture Office (PAO).
The harvests were from 15,145.41 hectares of rice fields.
According to PAO assistant chief Elias Sandig Jr., every hectare produced an average of 3.38 metric tons of rice.
The first quarter production nearly doubled the harvest in the same period last year, said Sandig.
“And may alanihon ta pa gani,” he added.
Sandig was confident that this year, the province would be able to surpass the volume of rice produced in 2017 which reached 892,844.51 metric tons.
Last year’s produce was higher than the 2016 rice harvest of 610,000 metric tons when the El Niño phenomenon hit the province.
PAO’s data also showed that the third and fourth districts of Iloilo had the highest production in 2017.
According to Sandig, Iloilo has more than enough supply of rice and it even sells to Cebu, Bacolod City and Metro Manila.
The province has 134,000 hectares of rice fields (75,000 hectares rain-fed and 55,000 irrigated)./PN
