Typhoon damage may affect PH’s rice sufficiency targets — DA

Rice fields submerged in floods after heavy rains.

MANILA, Philippines — The damages caused by recent typhoons may result to a decrease in the country’s self-sufficiency for rice by a few percent from the current target of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Secretary William Dar said Thursday.

In an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel, Dar said the DA wants to elevate the country’s rice self-sufficiency level for rice to 93 percent.

“Now if we are able to meet that target, then we will only have to import seven percent of our total rice consumption,” he said.

“With the typhoon damages now, that could go down and bring us back to almost 89 percent to 90 percent. We have yet to bring in 10 percent of our total rice consumption,” he added.

Dar said that if the country is able to produce 90 percent of its target stock for rice, the supply for the remaining percentage will have to be imported from other countries.

Asked if this means then that there will be more rice importation for 2021, Dar said: “Yes, that’s a given, because we are not able to produce yet 100 percent of our requirement.”

Nevertheless, he assured that the country still has enough supply of rice despite the devastation caused by the recent typhoons, the latest of which was Typhoon Ulysses that brought severe flooding in parts of Luzon.

He said that only eight days worth of rice supply have been damaged and that the country still has enough supply of rice for 82 days.

“Within the year as I have said, by the end of the year meron pa tayong (we still have) 82 days to last meaning that will bring us another 82 days from January 2021, then meron na tayong production by late March and April,” he also said.

Typhoons Quinta, Rolly, and Ulysses have caused P12.3 billion in damages to the agriculture sector based on DA’s data as of Thursday morning.

EDV