Wet season palay harvest starts, increases rice supply and tempers rice prices
Starting last week of August, the initial harvest of palay from the current wet season crop has commenced and will taken place until September, thus, augmenting rice supply and stabilizing retail prices of the staple.
The early palay harvest will initially come from three provinces -- Isabela, Nueva Ecija and North Cotabato -- producing an estimated 900,000 metric tons (MT), according to Leo Sebastian, agriculture undersecretary for rice industry development.
Farmers in these provinces were able to plant early in May, or four months ago, earlier than when the counterparts from other rice-producing areas in terms of harvest operations started planting.
"Palay harvest will peak in late September to October, contributing largely to the country's second semester (July to December) production, estimated at more than 11 million metric tons (MMT)," added Sebastian.
"Barring strong typhoons in the coming months that may adversely affect Central and Northern Luzon, we are aiming to harvest up to 11.5 MMT in the second semester of the year. This would breach the 20-million MT total national palay production, making it a record, being the highest in the country's history," Sebastian said.
Recently, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has confirmed that the national palay output from January to June 2023 rose to 9.02 MMT, 3.4 percent (%) more than the 8.7-MMT production for the same six-month period last year and in 2021.
"Riding on the momentum of a potential bumper 2023 palay harvest, we at the Department of Agriculture will continue to provide rice farmers with needed high-yielding seeds, fertilizers, biofertilizers, soil ameliorants, farm machinery, and extension support, this coming 2023-2024 dry season, under the Masagana Rice Industry Development Program (MRIDP)," Sebastian said.
He added that the DA family -- led by the National Irrigation Administration (NIA), Regional Field Offices (RFOs), PhilRice, PhilMech ATI, ACPC and Bureau of Soils and Water Management (BSWM) -- in partnership with the local government units (LGUs), Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), LandBank, Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation (PCIC) and the private sector are in the thick of clustering farms covered by the MRIDP. These are tilled by the Irrigators’ Associations (IAs), Farmers’ Cooperatives and Associations (FCAs), Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Organizations (ARBOs), and Small Water Irrigation System Associations (SWISAs).
Starting the next dry season, or in November this year, the DA through the MRIDP will focus on fully irrigated clustered farms to optimize palay yield, where farmers would plant high-yielding hybrid rice varieties to at least one million hectares (ha), and is expected to produce an average of seven to eight MT per hectare, for a total of 7 to 8 MMT. Presidential News Desk
