Weather and govt action will determine rice farmers’ fate

With Typhoon Pepeng and tropical storm Ondoy inundating much of Central Luzon in floodwaters—and the current threat of Typhoon Ramil (international codename Lupit)—the prospect of another rice crisis looms if the government fails to take proactive steps. The damage caused by Pepeng in Central Luzon can be likened to the “Great Flood of 1972” when torrential rains flooded much of that region and caused the country’s rice output to plunge by as much as 17 percent. Although the country imported rice after the 1972 floods, it eventually attained rice self-sufficiency during the administration of the late President Ferdinand Marcos through the Masagana 99 program.

It was only after 1986, after the Edsa People Power Revolt 1, that our country became a rice importer.Initial reports showed that the damage caused by Ondoy and Pepeng may not reach 10 percent of the country’s rice production for the year.

Based on Department of Agriculture data, Ondoy caused losses in palay amounting to 313,427 metric tons (MT), which represents 4.84 percent of the national target of 6.48 million MT, while Pepeng caused an initial loss of 246,152 MT constituting 3.8 percent. Hence, the total loss from both storms is 559,629 MT, which is about 8.64 percent of the projected produce for 2009.

If, however, one takes into account that the country is about 90 percent to 95 percent self-sufficient in rice production, government will have to import more rice just to plug losses from the two deadly storms.

“This [Ondoy and Pepeng] does not happen yearly. The last [similar flooding in Central Luzon] was in 1972,” said Dr. Frisco Malabanan, executive director of the Ginintuang Masa-ganang Ani (GMA) Rice Program.

The losses from palay were recorded mostly in Regions I, II, III, V and the Cordillera Administrative Region, with a total of 180,121 hectares badly affected. The monetary loss was placed at about P4.2 billion, consisting of P 4.1 billion worth of lost palay and P37 million in investments lost by farmers. Losses were recorded in all provinces of the Cordillera and the Ilocos Region, Cagayan and Nueva Vizcaya in the Cagayan Valley, Nueva Ecija and Pampanga in Central Luzon, and Albay and Cama-rines Sur in the Bicol Region.

Surprisingly, losses for corn was minimal.

For Ondoy, the total volume lost of 2,939 MT is 0.21 percent of the national target production of 1.34 million and from Pepeng, the loss was placed at 38,990 MT which is 2.79 percent of the national target.

Rice granary

Without doubt, Central Luzon is the country’s rice granary, which partly explains why the Marcos administration built large dams in that region, starting with Magat and Pantabangan. Along with other dams in Luzon, Magat and Panta-bangan provide water to irrigate the flat plains of Central Luzon suited for rice farming.

When asked if Mindanao can be developed into a rice granary given its typhoon-free status, Malabanan said, “Where are the irrigation systems there?”

While the two storms that wreaked havoc in Central Luzon can be regarded as a curse by farmers whose lands were hit, Malabanan sees the excess rains dumped into the dams as a “blessing” that could alleviate the mild drought that is projected to take place next year.

“The excess rains could alleviate the effects of the mild drought next year [because] we now have excess water in the dams,” Malabanan said.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) said in its latest advisory on the dryspell phenomenon called El Niño that “based on the latest observations and international forecast models, El Niño is expected to strengthen and last through the first quarter of 2010.”

Dangers of ‘El Niño’

The local Weather bureau also said “all concerned government agencies are advised to continue implementing appropriate measures to mitigate the potential adverse impacts of El Niño on agriculture, water resources, hydropower generation, health and sanitation, and other sectors.”

But Malabanan said that the excess rainfall from Ondoy and Pepeng would actually offset the expected negative effects of the mild El Niño in 2010. He added that the existence of the numerous dams in Central Luzon is actually a blessing because those infrastructures impounded a large amount of water that can be used for the next rice planting seasons, including the dry season covering the summer months of the year.

During the wet season when rains supply water directly to areas grown for rice, or the national irrigation systems, the area planted to rice reaches 2.5 million hectares.

In contrast, only 2 million hectares of land are planted to rice during the dry season because of lack of water. Rice farmers who find it impossible to plant rice during the dry season cultivate other crops like vegetables, sweet sorghum or tobacco.

While Pagasa projects a mild El Niño next year, the National American Space Administration (NASA) says in its website that even as scientists agree that El Niño is back, there’s less consensus about its future strength.

Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., even expressed uncertainty about whether the present El Niño event will intensify and create the impact similar to the El Niño episode of 1997 to 1998, which is considered the strongest in 100 years.

“For the past few months, the trade winds have weakened somewhat, but whether the new Kelvin waves traveling eastward across the Pacific will be adequate to pump this El Niño up enough to reinvigorate it and deliver any real impacts remains uncertain,” Patzert said.

The El Niño episode from 1997 to 1998 reduced the country’s rice production by at least 20 percent, which is bigger than the impact of the “Great Flood of 1972.”

Supply for 2010

If ever the projected dry spell is not “mild” as first thought of, what will be affected is the country’s rice supply for 2010, since the rice harvest for the rest of the year was already completed prior to the arrival of the two deadly storms.

This early, the government has taken steps to help farmers affected by the two storms to resume their planting activity by giving them free seeds, Malabanan said.

Over the long term, he said government should build more dams or “subdams” that would impound more water during the rainy season. The building of these subdams are already being supported by the Bureau of Soils and Water Management through the establishment of Small Water Impounding Projects that are being targeted for farming communities that expense national irrigation systems cannot serve.

But while government can be quite rosy about weather projections, predicting the weather is still an art or trade that has yet to be perfected by man.

In fact, Pagasa has projected that more or less five more typhoons will visit the country but the local Weather bureau failed to project the freakish amount of rainfall that Ondoy dumped in Metro Manila.

Hence, whether the country’s rice situation will get better or worse—and what the fate of our rice farmers will be—also depend largely on the weather. With climate change already unleashing its wrath, the Filipino farmer can end up really helpless as Ondoy and Pepeng recently and the El Niño episode of 1997 to 1998 clearly demonstrated.

If things turn for the worse, the person who gets elected president in May 2010 will face a gargantuan challenge. –Conrad Cariño, Sports Editor, Manila Times