CABANATUAN CITY , Philippines – The province of Nueva Ecija, considered the country’s rice granary, is virtually untouched by the El Niño phenomenon despite being identified as one of the so-called vulnerable areas, with the Department of Agriculture expecting a bumper harvest this dry cropping season.

Roy Imperial, DA assistant regional director for Central Luzon, told The STAR that only 3,162 hectares of the 146,770 hectares planted to rice in Nueva Ecija have been affected by the drought. This is considered “negligible” compared to other provinces hit by the prolonged dry spell. He said this translates to a meager P28 million in El Niño-related damages compared to billions in lost income in other provinces.

He said only portions of northern Nueva Ecija municipalities such as Carranglan, Cuyapo, Lupao and Talugtug were affected by the drought, mostly because farmers there were relying merely on irrigation supplied by small water impounding projects that have dried up.

“That is the beauty of the program of President Arroyo and (former Agriculture) Secretary Arthur Yap of distributing flat-bed dryers and repairing irrigation systems since two years ago,” he said, adding the effect of El Niño in Nueva Ecija was cushioned by the program.

He said that in Guimba town, farmers are getting abundant irrigation supply, the first time it has happened to them in 30 years.

Imperial said the target area for Nueva Ecija this 2010 is 152,537 hectares but because of El Niño, this had been reduced to 147,764 hectares. The targeted production in terms of volume is 736,023 metric tons for the dry cropping season but this has fallen short by 31,000 metric tons.

However, because of the minimal losses from El Niño, he said he still expects a bumper harvest for the province of 1.7 million metric tons for the dry and wet cropping seasons and for a third cropping season under the Quick Turn-Around program of the DA.

He explained that for the dry and wet seasons, they expect a harvest of 736,023 metric tons each and 30 percent of the yield for the dry season of 220,806.9 metric tons under the QTA scheme.

With this yield, we will even surpass the 1.5 million metric tons targeted for Nueva Ecija for 2010 under the Philippine Rice Master Plan,” he said.

Source: http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=557672&publicationSubCategoryId=77