The agricultural damage due to El Nino has reached P1.31 billion, Agriculture Department spokesperson Arnel de Mesa said Wednesday.

At a forum in the Manila Hotel, De Mesa said that 1.5 percent or around 14,000 hectares of agricultural land in the country have been affected by the dry spells.

De Mesa stressed that this was smaller compared to the worst El Nino the country experienced in the 90’s.

“This is just a small area, about 1.5 percent of the total area where there are palay crops are affected. In terms of volume, it’s less than one percent of our projected harvest for the year,” De Mesa said.

“If you compare this to the worst El Nino that struck the country from 1997 to 1998…about 372,000 hectares were affected. This time, we are already in the harvest period, March, April, and May. Hopefully, it won’t be that high,” he added.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) reported that crop losses reached P1.2 billion and affected 26,731.4 hectares of land.

It added that the dry spells had affected 29,409 families.

In a television interview, National Irrigation Administration (NIA) Administrator Eduardo Guillen said that only one percent of the farmlands they manage were affected.

“In the whole Philippines, 20 percent out of the 1.3 million hectares under NIA are vulnerable. One one percent of the farmlands were affected by El Nino,” Guillen said. Jaspearl Tan/DMS