Palay, corn production up 17% in H1

Palay and corn outputs for the first semester of the year grew 17 percent year-on-year to 12.27 million metric tons (MT), putting the country’s probable output at 19.2 million MT for 2017.

This would exceed the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) target of 18.5 million MT for the entire year, data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.

“I believe we’ve reached sufficiency in rice for the next year,” Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said.

For the Philippines to reach self-sufficiency, it needs to produce the national food requirement while also maintaining a buffer stock to be used in times of need, according to the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice).

For palay alone, production in the first half of the year reached 8.57 million MT, a 12.06 percent increase from the same period last year. Yield was at 4.09 million tons per hectare, a growth of 3.16 percent.

The improvement in output was due to the increase in harvest area to 947,000 hectares (has) this year from the previous 848,000 has, the PSA said.

Probable harvest area is also expected to swell in the coming months. This would be possible through government interventions and good weather conditions.

“If no typhoons would hit the country, we might reach a level of productivity in rice which would be able to sufficiently supply the needs of the country [up to] 2019,” said Piñol.

DA previously pushed back its rice self-sufficiency goal by 2020 citing the lack of available budget.