Agri losses to worsen with lingering El Niño

CEBU, Philippines - The agriculture industry may expect further losses amid the El Niño that is currently affecting farm production and water supply.

Angel Enriquez, regional director of the Department of  Agriculture in Central Visayas, said they had recently visited some towns in Cebu south and upland areas in Cebu City to see the situation of production areas.

In an interview with The FREEMAN yesterday, she reported that there are production areas that are still good but there are also areas that they learned to have already experienced the brunt of the El Niño-induced hot weather.

As of this writing, Enriquez could not yet give information on how much the El Niño has caused to the agriculture sector in terms of losses and how many farmers are already affected.

She said they are still validating reports coming from various municipalities.

The DA official also said that farmers are now harvesting and are waiting for the next planting season by May.

She hopes that rain will start pouring by that time as land preparation requires a lot of water.

But with the absence of rain for the several weeks already, Enriquez is worried that water in dams will continue to decrease.

She shared that water levels in dams in Bohol province are already getting critical because of the extreme hot weather.

Several cloud seeding operations were done in the province to help mitigate the water scarcity, Enriquez said.

Weather bureau PAGASA had predicted that the El Niño is going to prevail until the first half of this year.

But Enriquez expressed hope that rain will continue to occur by May.

She added the National Irrigation Administration is helping in supplying the water to critical production areas. — (FREEMAN)