Philippine agriculture grows slightly amid bad weather in 2009

 

 

The Philippine agriculture took a battering by a series of typhoons last year but still wriggled out of the morass by posting an insignificant growth of 0.37%.

 

Fisheries remained the engine of expansion, claimed Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary Arthur C. Yap, by posting a 2.45% growth and accounting for 26.4% of the total agricultural output last year.

 

The crops subsector took the brunt of climatic horrors, with production down by 1.42%, a figure that does not jibe with fears that more than 1.3 million tonnes of rice would be lost due to the destruction wrought by Ondoy and Pepeng in the last quarter of the year.

 

In what appears to be a silver lining for agriculture, the livestock subsector rebounded from its negative performance in 2008, registering a 1.24% expansion, slightly higher than the 1.16% expansion of hog production. Its total share of agricultural output was 12.47%.

 

''The gains of the first three quarters were cut by huge production losses during the fourth quarter of 2009,''said Yap, citing the final annual growth report by the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS).

 

At current prices, the gross value of agricultural production reached PHP1.2 trillion (US$260.8 billion) in 2009, representing a 2.18% rise from the 2008 level.

 

Commercial fisheries expanded 2.67%, while aquaculture grew 2.89% and municipal fisheries by 1.14%.

 

BAS director Romeo Recide reported a growth of 1.82% for poultry, which had a 14.33% share of the total agricultural output. Chicken output was up by 1.53% while the production of eggs rose by a decent 5.04%.

 

For the livestock subsector, the production of cattle and dairy registered gains of 2.49% and 3.33%, respectively. In 2009, the gross value of livestock production rose by 6.5%.

 

Yap said the DA will devote the bulk of its budget this year to battle climate change and cope with the impact of trade liberalisation.

 

Up to 86% of its PHP47 billion (US$1.02 billion) budget will go to various support services, such as the provision of flatbed dryers, corn drying centrals, fishports, and storage warehouses for farm produce, market linkages, strengthening of regulatory and disease eradication capabilities, and the establishment of satellite-based remote sensing and geographic information systems.

 

Moreover, Yap said the DA is strengthening its statistics and forecasting capabilities, developing and distributing climate-ready crops seeds, which are submergence-, drought- and disease-tolerant, engineering climate change adapted infrastructure for production and processing; enabling more financing for agriculture through innovative weather-based insurance schemes and disseminating more information, knowledge and training in crops science and planting techniques.

 

Consistent with the government's goal of attaining rice sufficiency by 2013, DA is allocating 36% of its total banner programme budget to the GMA Rice Programme, while fisheries, particularly aquaculture development, is programmed to absorb 32% of the budget for programmes and aquaculture will get PHP1 billion (US$21.7 million).