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Piñol: Philippines must achieve rice sufficiency in two years

The Philippine Star

July 20, 2016 | 1:07pm

KORONADAL CITY, Philippines (Philippines News Agency) -- The Philippines should be rice self-sufficient in the next two years to be ready against the adverse effects of climate change, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said.

Piñol said climate change makes everything unpredictable for Philippine agriculture, thus every farmer must be prepared.

“We need to attain rice sufficiency in the next two years and achieve buffer stocks for rice six months before the Duterte administration ends,” Piñol told local officials in his speech during South Cotabato's 50th foundation anniversary.

Piñol, Interior and the Local Government Sec. Ismael Sueno and Sec. Delfin Lorenzana, both from South Cotabato, were guest speakers.

“We do not know when the next El Niño would hit us. How long it would hit us? How wide the area would be?,” Piñol asked.

In a worst case scenario, Piñol asked, if Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia will experience severe drought, where would the Philippines import rice from?

The DA chief said rice sufficiency can be achieved with the government providing necessary assistance to farmers.

“We will support the farmers by providing free seeds and free fertilizers for the next cropping terms,” he said.

Piñol reminded farmers that they should deposit in a bank the equivalent amount of the production inputs given to them by the department so that when the next cropping season begins, money is readily available to buy seeds and fertilizers.

He also urged local governments to determine the total rice production in their area for the agency to know the number of bags of production inputs will be given to them in 2017.

"If we need to put up a communal irrigation project there, we will do that. If you need water pumps as well as pre-harvest and post-harvest machine, we will give you that," he said.

Piñol said that DA under his management will veer away from building huge irrigation projects worth billions of pesos, which, he said, have detrimental effects on the environment.

The multibillion-peso Malitubog-Maridagao irrigation project in North Cotabato has large budget allocations yet has not been bringing the irrigation that farmers need.

“When President Duterte appointed me as his Agriculture secretary, he had only two mandates. First, to stop corruption in the agency and [to] ensure that there is affordable and available food for every Filipino,” he said.

Piñol is convinced there are cases of corruption in the DA. "If there’s no corruption in the DA, there will be enough funds for everybody since the agency is one of the departments with huge budget allocations annually," he said.

On his way to General Santos City on the same day, he found more than P100 million in equipment stockpiled and rusting in the DA-12 compound in Tupi, South Cotabato.

He has ordered a probe into the failure to distribute the equipment to farmer beneficiaries.