Eastern Visayas Irrigation Projects

In Eastern Visayas P305-M irrigation projects to be implemented this year.

Tacloban City — The national government will embark on a P305 million worth of major irrigation projects in Leyte and Samar provinces this year that would boost local rice output, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) reported.

During the recent announcement of the 2008 Gross Regional Development Product (GRDP), NEDA Regional Director Buenaventura Go-Soco said that agriculture would bounce back in the next few years.

“We are expecting the agricultural sector to recover this 2009 and onwards with the implementation of irrigation projects,” Go-Soco said.

These projects are located in Villaba, Leyte with a cost of P100 million; Dolores, Eastern Samar with P95 million; Sulat, Eastern Samar with P30 million; Balangiga, Eastern Samar with P40 million; and Catubig, Northern Samar with P40 million.

“This will support thousands of rice farms and farmers in low-yielding areas of the region,” Go-Soco added. All of these facilities have been programmed for implementation within this year.

Eastern Visayas has a total rice area of 160,000 hectares, in which 57,000 hectares are supported with irrigation system. The three Samar provinces posted the smallest area backed irrigation system.

Leyte accounts about two thirds of the total annual rice production in the region with its 4,500 hectares farm supplied with water, the highest irrigation coverage.

Based on the 2008 data released by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), rice, which is one of the region’s major crops, grew by only 7.9% in 2008, lower than the 14.2% growth rate in 2007.

“The growth was not that high despite government’s effort in restoring and rehabilitating irrigation facilities and providing direct assistance to farmers,” Go-Soco explained.

Farm destruction wrought by natural calamities was blamed as one of the factors of the slow growth.

In a related development, the Department of Agriculture (DA) is looking at planting rice in 143,000 hectares of farm in Eastern Visayas from May to October 2009 in the bid to achieve 10% growth from last year’s output.

DA Regional Executive Director Leo Cañeda projected a 540,000 metric tons (MT) harvest for next planting period. Citing available figures, the official said that at least 565,000 metric tons was harvested from November 2008 to April 2009 cropping in the region.

“We overshot our target because we overshot our planting target by about 8% that’s why our actual output exceeded,” Cañeda said in an earlier interview.

To achieve the goal for next cropping, Cañeda said that they would intensify the promotion of high yielding rice seeds by providing subsidy to planters.

Experts said that a hectare of farm planted with hybrid seeds yields 7 metric tons (MT), way higher than the 5 MT and 2.5 MT productions of certified and good seeds, respectively.

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