Ifugao farmers see bumper rice harvest

Alfonso Lista, IFUGAO – If, as predicted by PAGASA, the coming months will experience a comparatively favorable weather, farmers here in the eastern side of Ifugao are anticipating a bumper harvest from their new hybrid palay seeds.

Alfonso Lista is one of two lowland towns of Ifugao with a vast agricultural land now enjoying the benefits of irrigation. The other town is Lamut, Ifugao’s border town with Nueva Vizcaya.

Close to 25 hectares of former Governor Gualberto Lumauig’s riceland in Barangay San Juan, located right along the Magat Dam, has just been planted with the latest hybrid palay seed, SL-16, while majority of the farmers in the area have been planted the SL-8 variety.

"It’s a great challenge to us farmers to try varieties that could give us a higher yield," Lumauig said. The hybrid varieties are expected to yield 300 to 350 cavans per hectare as compared to the current 100 to 120 cavans per hectare that farmers here harvest every planting season.

The former politician turned bigtime farmer, expressed optimism that "if majority of our traditional farmers will go hybrid, we can expect a bumper harvest of palay in the coming years and insure self-sufficiency in our rice supply."

Shunning political issues, the former governor and congressman who served his province for more than two decades, also revealed that he has shifted planting his 50-hectare cornland to vegetables "because government corn subsidy to our farmers through the National Food Authority (NFA) has been a dismal failure."

"Many of our corn farmers here in Ifugao have suffered loses because of the government’s failure to come to their rescue whenever they encounter natural and manmade setbacks," Lumauig said, citing the price of corn that went down as low as P5/kilo when the break-even figure is P8/kilo.

He praised the technicians of the Department of Agriculture (DA) for providing assistance and helping closely monitor the hybrid palay planting in Ifugao.