MANILA, May 9 — Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala said irrigation is the biggest intervention to achieve the projected rice self-sufficiency by 2013.

Alcala said with irrigated arable lands, five planting seasons can be realized in two years instead of just one planting in one year with non-irrigated lands.

”Perhaps, nobody could dispute the essential contribution of irrigation, because if the land is not irrigated you only plant once, while if you irrigate, there is an abundant flow, you could plant five times in two years,” he said.

Alcala said at the beginning of his term as agriculture chief, he used the fund for the rehabilitation of irrigation facilities.

“We finished that in our first year, and in the 2nd year, we combined both rehabilitation and building new irrigation including restoring the old ones that were not reached,” he said.

Alcala expects they would exceed their targeted 191,000 hectares of irrigated lands for 2013 this year — a year in advance.

“This is a good reason why we are progressing on our achievement for self-sufficiency,” he said.

“With the rate we are going and with the intervention we are launching we have already gained the highest yield in rice last year, which was a record-breaker. By the first and second quarter of 2012, we see that we would exceed our rice yield this year and it could happen that we would attain 100 percent rice self-sufficiency a year ahead of our target," he noted.

In fact, Alcala said, the government is planning to export rice by next year "because we will be buying different varieties of rice so we could be competitive in the world’s rice market.”

The DA chief said the other important innovation that the agency introduced to the farmers was the use of certified seeds because it is more affordable compared to the hybrid seeds they used to plant.

“However, we made them choose between certified and hybrid seeds so we have seen the speedy increase in the palay production by 20 to 30 percent.”

”We are also imparting the farming techniques we adapted from the IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) and being modified, upgraded and monitored by PhilRice,” he added. [By Modesto Antonio G. Ibarra (PNA)

RMA/lgi/MAGI]