Farm output grew 0.5% in April to June

The country’s agricultural production improved by 0.5 percent in the second quarter of 2020, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said on Wednesday in spite of the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) forecast of a contraction on the back of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on the sector.

“We are happy…with this growth, as we were expecting a significant contraction in agriculture. Thanks to our farmers and [fishermen] for their hard work and dedication to continuously produce enough food for the country,” Agriculture Secretary William Dar told the media.

The improvement was mainly attributed to production increases in the crops and fisheries subsectors at 5 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively. The livestock and poultry sectors, in contrast, registered output decreases of 8.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively.

Total value of farm produce based on current prices reached P439.8 billion in the three months ending June, up 4.6 percent from P424.6 billion year-on-year.

Under the crops subsector, which contributed 53.7 percent of total output, palay (unmilled rice) production increased by 7.1 percent and corn output expanded by 15.4 percent.

Under the fisheries subsector, which accounted for 16 percent of total production, output of Bali sardinella rose by 45.7 percent, followed by that of skipjack (19.6 percent), roundscad (18.6 percent) and cavalla (8 percent).

Livestock production, which make up 17.3 percent of the overall output, decreased by 8.5 percent, driven by lower production of cattle (29.5 percent), carabao (26.5 percent), goat (19.3 percent) and hog (5.2 percent). Dairy production was the sole bright spot, improving by 6 percent.

Poultry output, which accounted for 13 percent of the total, fell on the back of a 7.8-percent decrease in chicken production and a 1-percent decline in duck and duck egg output. Chicken egg production grew by 4.9 percent.

In value terms, all four subsectors generated P237.8 billion, P73.8 billion, P55.1 billion and P73.1 billion, respectively — all lower than their year-ago levels based on current prices, except for crops.

These figures come after the DA initially targeted a 1.5-percent growth for the sector. Dar admitted that while meeting this figure would be an “uphill” struggle because of the pandemic, he was confident that his department would attain it.

These also come as Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd highlighted the importance of unhampered food production in the country amid the Covid-19 crisis.

In an event marking Dar’s second year as Agriculture chief on Wednesday, Dominguez challenged the DA to exert all efforts to help the agricultural sector grow by at least 2 percent a year “to keep it ahead of the country’s population expansion rate,” which Dar accepted.

The Finance secretary hopes that the gains in productivity in the rice sector could be extended to some plantation crops, particularly sugar, “where archaic trade restrictions preserved inefficiencies in our domestic production,” he said.

He also said there was a need to study ways to improve the welfare of sugar workers, small landholders, planters, millers and other domestic industries without restraining growth in other equally important sectors of society, such as food processing.

He also pushed to further digitalize the country’s agricultural systems, saying that “the more direct the link between the farmer and the consumer, the less non-value-adding middlemen and processes will there be. As a result, the price structure will return more value to both the consumer and the producer.” WITH A REPORT FROM MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO

Source: TheManila Times