The Department of Agriculture (DA) predicts a good year for the farm sector in 2010 and hopes that the country would be spared of the climatic beating it experienced this year.

In its annual assessment, DA stressed that government's intervention programs were crucial in nursing agriculture and fisheries back to health in spite of the onslaught of killer typhoons in the second semester of the current year.

 

Agriculture Secretary, Arthur C. Yap, said the implementation of the 43.7-billion peso (PHP) (US$940 million) FIELDS food security and sufficiency programme, and plan for the development of two million hectares to generate two million jobs under the Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) were crucial in ensuring that the farm sector would not be held back.

 

FIELDS stands for the six areas where the government's intervention programs are being channeled into under the Arroyo administration-- Fertilizers, Irrigation and other rural infrastructure like farm-to-market roads (FMRs), Extension services and education for farmers, Loans, Dryers and other post-harvest facilities, and Seeds and other genetic materials.

 

Secretary Yap said: "As a result of the swift and stepped-up implementation of these programmes, the DA has helped Philippine agriculture and fisheries grow by 1.5 in the first nine months of 2009, with livestock, poultry and fisheries as its primary growth drivers despite the increasingly crippling effects of climate change on farm productivity."

 

The livestock sub-sector almost recovered from its 2008 slump as it grew by 1.95 per cent this year mainly due to hog production, he added.