IN its monthly forecast, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) is expecting the country to face La Niña after the recent experience of El Niño.
The country is expecting continuous shortfall in rice inventory and will not be able to meet its rice-sufficiency target before the end of the Aquino administration.
With the occurrence of El Niño, to be followed by La Niña, it will be another blow, as the inventory and production is expected to continue to go down further. The agri sector has posted a negative-growth rate year-on-year, resulting in a spike of the prices of basic commodities.
Recently, locally listed agricultural company AgriNurture Inc. (ANI) enters into a joint venture with Phoenix Commodities Ltd., one of the world’s top 3 players in the global rice-trading industry.
ANI will distribute well-milled rice for Phoenix in order to meet the self-sufficiency targets of the country. The Philippines will not be able to meet its rice-sufficiency target before the end of the current administration and is aiming to import 500 metric tons (MT) of rice. Due to El Niño, supply from other rice-exporting countries is also expected to decline. The entry of Phoenix-ANI will give the country’s rice supply a big boost.
ANI has hybrid rice-seedling production with China’s biggest agricultural company Bei Da Huang under a local joint-venture company Beidahuang Agro Industrial Development (Philippines) Inc.
Hybrid rice seedlings are widely used in rice-producing nations to increase yield by an average 7.5 MT per hectare during the wet season and 9 MT during dry season.
Phoenix is one of the top 3 players in the global rice-trading industry today, trading close to 1,000,000+ MTs of rice annually, and is now among the top 5 exporters from India. Its business model is based on upstream integration and is now in the process of duplicating the Basmati experience across other origins of premium rice, including Thailand, Vietnam and the United States. At any given time, it has enough inventory to augment part of the country‘s shortage.
