CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Philippines?Most of the 48,454 hectares of rice farms in Pampanga are surviving the dry spell.

As of Monday, palay grown in 705 ha in the fourth district have wilted ?with no chances of recovery,? said Roland Imperial, assistant director of the Department of Agriculture in Central Luzon.

Rice in 6,162 ha has been harvested, he said, citing the report of the provincial agricultural office.

Farms are able to withstand the lack of rains because the ground has adequate moisture from last year?s rains and floods and irrigation facilities are available to farmers, he said.

?The damages for now are also less because farmers heeded the DA?s advice last October to shift to crops that need less water, like watermelon and tomatoes,? he said in a telephone interview on Monday.

The areas planted to rice usually double during the wet season when farmers who do not have money for irrigation fees rely on the rains instead.

Imperial said the declaration of emergency in relation to problems that beset the agricultural sector is mainly the task of local governments.

He said the declaration of a state of emergency, as proposed by Pampanga Rep. Anna York Bondoc for the eight towns in the fourth district amid dry spell, will have to be made through a resolution passed by the legislative councils of the local or provincial governments.

The DA, as a support agency, will concur with the declaration after it has verified the situation on the ground, he said.

Imperial said that in the fourth district, where the downstream of the Pampanga River passes through and which is serviced by the Angat-Maasim River Irrigation System (Amris), 3,397 ha are considered threatened and only 2,000 ha will be supplied with water.

Bondoc, he said, has sought alternative sources of water for the balance of 1,397 ha through shallow tube wells or small water impounding projects.

?Some of these areas are only planted with rice during wet season. The water from Amris is really not enough during the dry season,? Imperial said.

The regional DA has set aside P31.2 million for measures to ease the impact of the dry spell associated with the El Niño weather phenomenon.

In the Cordillera, Ifugao Gov. Teodoro Baguilat Jr. said he had been urging the provincial board to declare a state of calamity to help farmers deal with the dry spell.

He proposed to use the calamity funds to prepare an emergency food program for rice-farming communities hit by the dry spell, as well as a seed program for farmers once rains come in June.

But Baguilat said the board members had been skeptical because the funds could be diverted to promote his candidacy.

He said some officials also belittled the proposed El Niño emergency plan that involves finding alternative irrigation systems for the Ifugao terraces, saying they have no control over when the rains would come.

The provincial board was expected to tackle Baguilat?s request in its session Tuesday.

Baguilat asked the officials to declare their own towns under a state of calamity to enable local governments to use their calamity funds in dealing with the impact of the drought.

Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon; and Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon