2011 farm output likely flat — Agriculture official

After a lack of recovery during 2010 from the negative output for 2009 due to severe damages inflicted by tropical storms Ondoy and Pepeng, the farm sector may post flat growth for 2011, a ranking Department of Agriculture official said Tuesday. "There's a long way for us to catch up, considering that output last year was negative. There could be a chance for positive growth but most likely it will be flat," said Romeo Recide, director of Bureau of Agriculture Statistics told reporters at the sidelines of the budget hearing for the 2011 DA budget. The Department of Budget and Management has slashed to P37.7 billion the P58 billion budget requested by the Agriculture Department. Recide noted the damage wrought by tropical storms Ondoy and Pepeng, which swept one after another through Luzon from late September to mid-October, causing massive flooding in critical areas. The damage was exacerbated during the first half of 2010 by the onslaught of the El Niño-induced dry spell, he added. "Previous events last year and this year will just even out, hence growth could be flat [in 2011], based on our estimates," Recide said. For 2010, meanwhile, third quarter output is seen to remain negative from the tail-end effects of El Niño. In the first semester of 2010, farm output including crops, fisheries, and livestock fell 2.59 percent from the prolonged dry spell. Palay or paddy rice production dropped by 10.24 percent to 6.62 million metric tons (MT) in the first half from 7.37 million MT a year earlier. Planting this second half is expected to recover by 3.85 percent, as delayed planting for the fourth quarter may grow production to 30.3 percent, but the total palay output for 2010 will likely close at -0.17 percent. Corn, the country’s second staple crop, exhibited a similar performance, posting a deeper 24.95-percent contraction to 2.41 million MT from 3.21 million MT in the January-June comparable period. However, various intervention measures are being implemented at the grassroots level to help the agriculture sector rebound, said the official. Last week, the Agriculture Department decided to scrap the seed subsidy for the wet season after reallocating the remaining P1.3 billion from the rice program to other production interventions supporting the 2010 sufficiency program. The shift is in line with government’s Agri Pinoy program that is geared toward rice self-sufficiency by 2013. According to the department, the bulk of the P1.3 billion will be spent on irrigation, postharvest, seed production assistance, organic production assistance, research and development, extension services, and production loans. Meanwhile, fisheries output went down 0.11 percent from a base of 4.67 percent in 2009, while the 2.48 percent growth posted by aquaculture was not enough to boost the performance of commercial and municipal fisheries at minus 4.7 percent and minus 1.55 percent, respectively. On the other hand, a 2.11 percent growth was recorded for livestock, with a 2.46 percent growth for poultry in the first half comparable period. —With Larissa Mae Suarez/VS, GMANews.TV