Montemayor to convene conference on El Niño

Newly appointed Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Montemayor said yesterday he will convene a conference in two weeks that will draw up a comprehensive program to counter the ill-effects of the El Niño phenomenon that has already caused a 30-percent drop in the country’s humidity.

In a press briefing, Montemayor said El Niño mitigation is one of the most immediate concerns the government needs to address because the phenomenon will result in tremendous losses to the agriculture sector.

He said El Niño mitigation is part of his 11-point agenda which he intends to implement during his 100 days in office.

Montemayor said the El Niño can erode the agriculture sector’s 3.7 percent growth last year, and "slow it down by 2.4 to 3 percent."

A P51-million budget, he said, has been earmarked for cloud seeding to induce rains during the El Niño months which may last until the third quarter this year.

The cloud seeding operations are expected to cover 1.21 million hectares of ricefields and 420,364 hectares of corn farms that may be affected by drought until May this year.

Montemayor said he will also give priority to development programs for Mindanao. So far, he has identified five projects, mostly foreign-assisted and costing a total of P30 billion.

He said he will also focus his efforts against smuggling and the recovery of the coconut levy funds.

He plans to convene a summit of "stakeholders" of the agriculture industry – farmers, fisherfolk, processing firms, exporters, agribusiness entrepreneurs – to study how the sector can become globally competitive and how to harness available resources and expertise.

Montemayor said he supports the initiatives of farmers’ groups and civil society to recover the coco levy funds.

He said Executive Order 313, which the former Estrada administration issued, will be suspended pending a review. The order called for the creation of a coco levy trust fund. – With Rommel Ynion