TACLOBAN CITY—The Department of Agriculture (DA) in Eastern Visayas expressed continued confidence it could still hit its target of harvesting at least a million metric tons of rice at the end of this year despite recent weather disturbances in the region.
Tropical Depression “Ramon,” the last weather disturbance to hit the region, didn’t cause much damage to agriculture in Eastern Visayas, according to Rufino Ayaso, regional operations division chief of the regional DA office.
Ayaso said on Monday that the only reported damage to agriculture by Ramon was on a 26-hectare farm in Ormoc City with a production loss of about 104 MT.
The regional DA office has set a palay production target of a million MT for 2011, higher than last year’s production of 964,145 MT. “We could still reach our target,” Ayaso said.
Floods in the region in the first three months of the year brought damages to 6,637 ha of rice farms, resulting in a production loss of about 15,000 MT, said Ayaso.
The Bureau of Agricultural Statistics said the region’s palay production in the first half of 2011 reached 516,723 MT. More than half of this, or 287,097 MT, came from Leyte, the hardest hit by floods in the region.
Palay yield in Samar reached 62,563 MT; Northern Samar, 54,260 MT; Southern Leyte, 52,313 MT; Biliran, 32,352 MT and Eastern Samar, 28,138 MT.
According to Ayaso, if the region would continue to have a palay yield within the range of what it had in the first semester of the year, there is no doubt that the million-metric-ton target could be achieved.
“We remain to be positive that we can reach our target,” he said.