Department of Agriculture to farmers: Replant immediately

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Agriculture (DA) is urging rice farmers tilling at least 26,000 hectares to immediately replant palay after their harvest to mitigate the impact of El Niño on rice output.

The DA said this strategy, called Quick Turn Around (QTA), is one of the measures it is implementing to mitigate the impact of the dry spell on water resources to ensure continuous rice output.

In response, rice farmers have already begun replanting in more than 5,500 hectares of land.

“The agency aims to implement the quick-turn-around strategy in more than 26,000 hectares,” it said on Friday.

Furthermore, the DA said it has reached out to more than a million rice farmers to implement the alternate wetting and drying technology to reduce their water consumption across 15,000 hectares of land.

“AWD is a water-saving technology that rice farmers can apply to reduce their water use in irrigated fields,” Agriculture Assistant Secretary U-Nichols Manalo said.

“On the other hand, QTA is a strategy wherein all rice farms after harvest shall quickly replant immediately without waiting for the months of the succeeding planting season to begin,” Manalo added.

The DA immediately implemented the measures in compliance with President Marcos’ Executive Order No. 53 which directed the government to streamline, reactivate, and reconstitute the old El Niño task forces under EO No. 16 series of 2001 and Memorandum Order No. 38 Series of 2019.