DA now pushing hybrid rice

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Agriculture (DA) is now encouraging farmers to invest in hybrid rice seeds to enable the rice sector to recover from production loses after the onslaught of Typhoon Yolanda in the Visayas and Typhoon Santi in Central Luzon this year.

Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said the government would continue to educate farmers on the benefits of using hybrid rice seeds despite the higher investment it entails.

“We are encouraging farmers to use hybrid rice seeds. When you plant hybrid rice seeds, there will of course be increased costs in irrigation and fertilizer. But the returns are also good. So we will explain this to them,” he said.

Hybrid rice seeds can yield as much as seven to eight metric tons (MT) per hectare against inbred varieties which only yield between four to five MT per hectares. High yielding varieties are grown by both private and state entities.

“We should give weight to new tasks like increasing hybrid rice cultivation areas,” said Alcala.

Because of the high cost of hybrid seeds and farm inputs, some Filipino farmers prefer to use inbred varieties instead.

Alcala, in his first few years at the DA, was not seen on promoting hybrid rice because of the higher cost.

Alcala said, however that the Philippine Rice Research Institute (Philrice) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) are now growing hybrid varieties Mestizo 19 and Mestizo 20 which yields more than seven metric tons per hectare.

PhilRice and IRRI have also produced inbred varieties 224, 222 and 168 which yields six to seven percent per hectare.

Agriculture undersecretary Dante Delima said earlier the DA National Rice Program would provide assistance to farmers growing hybrid rice in the form of farm mechanization and other farm inputs to help them defray costs.

After the onslaught of Typhoon Yolanda in November, the Agriculture department conceded that self-sufficiency in rice would not be attained this year.

Under the Food Staples Sufficiency Program, self-sufficiency entails covering the annual domestic per capita consumption of 115 kilograms per year while still providing for the 90-day buffer stock requirement. After the supertyphoon pummeled Visayas, the country is seen to attain a sufficiency level of only 97 to 98 percent this year.

To prop up the country’s buffer stock, the National Food Authority Council approved the importation of 500,000 metric tons (MT) of rice from Vietnam which would be shipped in tranches until the end of the first quarter of 2014.