Rice and the El Niño

NFA once again has no choice but to import rice in order to feed our people. Our farmers can’t produce enough rice to feed our consumption because of the long drought brought about by the El Niño phenomenon. This is the biggest irony since we are an agricultural based country yet we can’t produce enough rice.


Our government particularly the Department of Agriculture should have foreseen the El Niño and its effect to our rice production. I am not so sure whether they also have enough budget to build additional dams or maybe their budget were consumed by the bureaucracy. Building dams is the only solution to the problems of El Niño phenomenon. Dams will store the water from the rain during the rainy seasons. This is the only way that can sustain our rice production since rice will only thrive in water. It will also in a way help in power generation.

My sister who is based in the South of Bukidnon is a rice planter. She toils several hectares of rice paddies or ‘Basak’ in Hiligaynon. She’s just fortunate that her rice paddies have a sustainable water source. It’s not dependent to a government run dam. By the way, the government run dam is only concentrated in the Central part of Bukidnon in Valencia particularly. So farmers in the central part of Bukidnon are luckier than the rest because of the presence of dam.

She can harvest three to four times a year as well because of the abundant supply of water. This enabled her to save several sacks of rice of the family consumption for the whole year. She doesn’t buy rice at all for the family consumption. If she does buy rice, it would be for the hybrid seedling or ‘binhi’.

I’ve seen reports that the water supply in the province of Iloilo will not sustain the growth of the rice. Nagaliki na ang duta so farmers could not anymore plant. It’s sad because these farmers are really dependent to the yield of their rice fields. The future of their families lies in the water supply. I hope that our politicians particularly the representatives of the 5 districts of Iloilo will pour their pork allocation to agricultural projects that would benefit our farmers. They should end their senseless spending. Mahuya man sila sa ila nga mga constituencies.