The Agriculture Department is asking for a higher budget of P71 billion in 2017 to boost rice production, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said Thursday.
“The new budget I submitted to Budget Department is no longer P46 billion, but P71 billion because that already includes the first tranche of the three-year rice productivity enhancement program,” Piñol told reporters.
Piñol said the rice program would cost the government a total of P64 billion over the next three years. The first tranche of the budget will be P31 billion, he said.
He said the government aimed to achieve rice sufficiency status by 2019.
“For next year, I reduced the allocation for the farm-to-market roads. Our focus will be on production and on seeds, inputs, new harvest areas, fertilizers and more irrigation projects,” Piñol said.
Data from the department set a palay (unmilled rice) production target of 18.517 million metric tons in 2017, 20.342 million MT in 2018 and 21.626 million MT in 2019.
Piñol said there was a need to attain rice sufficiency, on the effects of climate change.
“The climate change changed the whole scene in the agriculture sector. Nobody could assure me that there will be no El Niño in the next years,” Piñol said.
Piñol said under the rice program, farmers would also be obliged to open an account where they would deposit the equivalent of the input or seeds given to them for free.
“We will do this so that next planting season…, farmers will have funds to buy seeds,” Piñol said.
Pinol earlier said that aside from achieving rice sufficiency, the government would also aim to have enough rice stock for the country.
“At the end of the term of the president, my vision is to be able to come up with a grain surplus stock, good for six months. And we will be putting up grain silos in critical areas all over the country,” Piñol said.
“At any given time, this country must have a supply of six months to be stored in grain silos so that in case of El Niño, we will have supply. We don’t want a food riot in this country,” Piñol said.