THE Philippines’s unmilled rice output last year breached the 20-million metric ton (MMT) mark—making it the highest volume on record—despite the over P2.5-billion damage caused by Typhoon Odette to the rice industry, Agriculture Secretary William D. Dar said.
In a virtual press briefing on Tuesday, Dar said the country met its target of producing at least 20 MMT of palay last year, which is 3.09 percent higher than the current record of 19.4 MMT recorded in 2020.
“In rice production, in spite of Typhoon Odette, in 2021 we will get a new record harvest surpassing the 2020 record harvest of 19.4 million metric tons,” he said.
“We are seeing a breach of 20 MMT. This will now be a new record harvest of rice production in the country,” he added.
In the first week of January, the Department of Agriculture (DA) earlier estimated that palay output last year could have reached at least 19.95 MMT. The department arrived at the projection by combining the 12.55 MMT output recorded in the January to September period and the forecasted fourth-quarter harvest of at least 7.4 MMT.
The DA rolled out numerous measures to boost domestic rice production last year, which it organized under the so-called Philippine Integrated Rice
Program (PIRP).
The PIRP includes the annual national rice program of the DA, the rice competitiveness enhancement fund (RCEF) and the rice resiliency project (RRP), which covers non-RCEF areas/beneficiaries.
“In all, the country’s rice industry is on the right track, as we observe the mid-term anniversary in March 2022 of the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) that saw implementation of the annual P10-billion RCEF support to rice farmers,” PIRP Director Dionisio Alvindia said in an earlier statement.
The DA said since the rollout of the RCEF, the average palay yield in beneficiary areas has increased to 4.26 MT per hectare from 3.64 MT, while production costs declined to P11.52 per kilogram from P12.52 per kilogram.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) earlier reported that the country’s rice self-sufficiency ratio in 2020 improved to 85 percent from 79.8 percent in 2019 on the back of the record-high harvest.
The PSA defines SSR as the “magnitude of production in relation to domestic utilization.” It is the extent to which a country’s supply of commodities is derived from its domestic production, or the extent to which a country relies on its own production resources.
Image credits: Bernard Testa