NIA to rehabilitate 90,000 hectares of agri land

MANILA, Philippines – The National Irrigation Administration (NIA) is targeting to rehabilitate 90,000 hectares of irrigated agricultural lands this year with a P3.5-billion funding from the national government.

NIA Administrator Marcelino Tugaoen also revealed yesterday that of all the irrigated lands in the country, only 46 percent are in good condition.

Speaking at the radio program of Vice President Noli de Castro over dzMM, the head of the NIA said that there are 3.1 million hectares of agricultural lands all over the country that have potential for irrigation but only 1.4 million hectares of these lands are currently irrigated.

Tugaoen said the focus of the NIA in recent years has been to rehabilitate and restore irrigation facilities that have been destroyed since the 1970s.

“Because of the lack of maintenance, there are some irrigation facilities that have been destroyed, like (irrigation) canals and gauges,” he said.

“And over the years of not being used, they (irrigation facilities) have become non-functional,” he added.

He said the NIA rehabilitated 22,000 hectares in 2006 and 55,000 in 2007, with funding worth P2 billion and P3.5 billion, respectively.

He said these were done mostly in the 37 rice-producing provinces in the country.

In the same radio program, Silvestre Bontoc, president of the National Federation of Irrigators’ Association, said it was only recently that the government was able to address these non-functional irrigation systems.

He said this is one of the needs of farmers that the government has not fully addressed and which might have contributed to the present crisis in rice supply.

“Many of the irrigated lands have been converted to other uses. Because the farmers are usually not earning enough, they are forced to sell their lands,” he said.

He added that the government also needs to address the sources of credit available to farmers.

He said farmers usually do not have easy access to credit, since creditors like the Land Bank of the Philippines ask “too many requirements” from the farmers.

The Philippine Rice Research Institute also said recently that the Philippines’ long-term goal of self-sufficiency in rice will never be achieved unless it expands land for the cultivation of the staple or plants more genetically enhanced high-yield rice varieties.

In a statement, PhilRice director Leocadio Sebastian said these are the two options to ensure food security in the country.

He said farmers should plant more genetically enhanced rice strains that yield up to 35 percent more than the traditional varieties.                         

The country has about 1.9 million hectares of rain-fed rice farms, Sebastian said. In contrast, Thailand has 9.9 million hectares of rice fields and Vietnam devotes 7.5 million hectares for the propagation of the staple.

Biotechnology has been addressing this problem with the introduction of alternative rice varieties resistant to rice diseases that led to low productivity, he said.

Tungro-disease (RTD) and bacterial leaf blight resistant (BLB) rice varieties are being developed to lessen yield losses in the coming years.

“At present, two BLB-resistant rice varieties, Tubigan 7 and Tubigan 11, are already commercially available,” Sebastian said.

“While the development of conventional rice takes between eight and 10 years, genetically enhanced varieties using the tools of biotechnology would take only five years to develop,” Sebastian said.

PhilRice said while the initial cost of cultivating biotech rice is higher, the long-term benefit is positive since the gross income of individual farmers would rise by at least 26 percent.