MORE NEWS, ILOCOS SUR

Tobacco farmers offer to plant palay
By Teddy Molina

NARVACAN, Ilocos Sur – The country’s tobacco farmers are raring to join the government efforts to solve the rice crisis. Their plan is to plant palay in 3,335 hectares of tobacco lands in the northern provinces. In a letter to Administrator Carlitos Encarnacion of the National Tobacco Administration (NTA), Carlos Cachola, president of the Philippine Association of Tobacco-Based Cooperatives (PATCO), offered to participate in the “accelerated rice production effort” of the Department of Agriculture.

Cachola said the 3,335 hectares of tobacco lands targeted for palay production would generate 16,675 metric tons of the staple. The effort will cover five tobacco-growing provinces ‑ Pangasinan, La Union, Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, and Abra ‑ and will involve 6,670 tobacco farmers. The group asked to be provided with production assistance, including a subsidy of one cavan of certified palay seeds per hectare.   Encarnacion endorsed the PATCO letter to Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap. It will not be the first time that tobacco farmers would plant rice. Many of them have been raising the staple once a year, ahead of the tobacco-cropping season. 

Cachola said palay-producing tobacco farmers have posted an average yield of 5.12 tons per hectare in the last nine years. Their output has reportedly beaten the national average yield of 2.93 tons per hectare for palay planted in rain-fed areas. In Isabela, amid reports of a grim scenario of rice shortage predicted to last until 2010, the production of the country’s staple crop here is more than adequate to supply its domestic requirements as well as even support most of its yield to other regions needing rice supply, the agriculture office here said Sunday.

Danilo Tumamao, provincial agriculturist, said in Ilagan that the province, which has the highest rice yield per hectare among rice-producing provinces in the country, has achieved 283 percent self-sufficiency in rice, meaning that it produces 183 percent more than it consumes. As a result, he said, a higher percentage of the rice production here is sent out of the province to support the growing consumption needs of other provinces of the country, including the metropolis. 

“Actually, 70 percent of provincial rice production goes out of the province,” Tuma­mao said, but despite this, the province still receives a buffer allocation from the National Food Authority. 

According to recent reports from the Department of Agriculture, the province produced at least 1.03 million metric tons, second only to Nueva Ecija’s production of around 1.8 million metric tons.