Samar poised as Philippine’s biggest seed production area

MANILA, Philippines — The government plans to transform Samar into the country’s biggest seed production area.

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said the town of San Roque in Northern Samar would be converted into the  biggest seed production center in the Philippines with about 2,000 hectares planted to selected high-yielding varieties developed by the Philippine Rice Research Institute.

The seed production area in San Roque will be the foundation of the recently-launched Samar Rice Development Program (SRDP), where new farms in three Samar provinces will use modern technology and mechanization.

“Under the program, a private seed production group will set up a nucleus farm of 200 hectares, establish rice seeds processing facilities and a refrigerated warehouse for the storage of the seeds,” Piñol said.

“The private seed production group will engage the farmers of San Roque in a seed production contract where the seeds from the farmers will be bought by the company,” he added.

DA and PhilRice will provide the farmers with technical training, equipment and loan support and establish farm-to-market roads and irrigation systems.

It will likewise purchase the seeds produced in San Roque to be distributed to the rice farmers in the rest of Samar Island, including parts of Leyte.

The development of Samar as the new production area for rice is expected to be the first beneficiary of the Tariffication Law as part of the government’s efforts to boost supply of the country’s main staple.

By 2020, the SRDP is expected to contribute an estimated 1.2 million metric tons of paddy rice to the national production, which will make Samar Island one of the major rice production areas of the country.

The SRDP is part of the DA’s Southern Swing Initiative that aims to develop at least 300,000 hectares of new rice farms in the southern provinces of the country to compensate for the projected damage by typhoons every year on crops in Northern Luzon.

Other areas identified in the Southern Swing initiative are Western Visayas, Mindoro and Palawan, Central Mindanao, Lanao del Sur, Bukidnon and Zamboanga Peninsula.

The targeted 300,000 hectares of new rice areas are expected to be fully developed by 2020.