Continue ‘cloud seeding,’

NIA shares farmers’ wish

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol June 21 (PIA)—There is still a need for continuous cloud seeding operations, this is according to the National Irrigation Administration-7 (NIA-7), based on the feedback from their irrigators associations.

And to illustrate the need, NIA through a report shared to the Philippine Information Agency bared that of the total 17,676 hectares of rice farm areas NIA programmed for irrigation service in the second cropping season for 2024, the way below normal precipitation has forced them to serve only 1,998 hectares, all over Bohol.

The 1,998 hectares would only be 11.30 percent of the total production areas which are expected to give Boholanos some of its needed rice supply for the year.

In the NIA report coming out two weeks past the traditional beginning of the cropping season when farmers would have normally been in the thick of farm preparations, it showed that some 1000 hectares of farm lands from 5 small water irrigation systems have not even started to do land preparations, due to lack of water.

It may be recalled that NIA initially released irrigation water for land soaking since May 20 in Malinao Dam areas and Bayongan Dam areas, June 3 in Capayas Dam, Benliw Dam and Talibon Small Reservoir Irrigation System (SRIs) and has since then soaked 456 hectares and irrigated enough for farmers to work on land preparation to 1,608 hectares, based on the NIA June 17 report.

Based on the report shared by NIA 7, the reduced number of farmlands to be served is primarily caused by the scarcity of water, which has also depleted the natural inflow of water to irrigation facilities, shared NIA -7 Operations Officer Engr. Maria Donesa Autida.

Without the usual rains to help farmers prepare the land for the cropping season, NIA has to calculate how far, will its impounded-water go to make sure that the farms that they decide to irrigate would have sufficient water from the water intensive land soaking until harvest time.

NIA estimates 100 cubic meters of water would be needed to fully serve a one hectare farm from land soaking to harvest for a duration of about 5 months of flooding.

But with just about 9 hours of cloud seeding sorties when a rain inducing team onboard an airplane sprinkles vacuum dried ordinary salt to low hanging clouds to get them to fall within the watersheds which can channel the water to the dams, rains have started to saturate the farms, lessening the wastage of NIA’s irrigation water just for seepage to the extremely dry ground.

Still needing the rains to get their farms wet enough to allow for farm preparations are Tugan-Can-olin SRIP, Tubigon’s Ilijan SRIS, Ilaya SRIS, San Vicente SRIS and Binaojot Small Water Impounding, owning up a total of 1,014 hectares of potential productive rice lands.

The succeeding rains would also allow Malinao Dam irrigators associations to accomplish and redraw their target from 1975 hectares to more farms, and reach not just the 1,030 hectares of farms served by the Bayongan Dam.

With the artificially ushered rains falling in the vicinity of Capayas Dam, it could increase NIA’s initial target of 70 hectares of the 923 hectares it can ideally cover with its irrigation facility.

From the 143 hectares targeted for Zamora Taibon, NIA could reach out to the rest of the 854 hectares of farms of their farmer members and another 63 more hectares of farm lands under the Benliw SRIP which were not included in the initial programmed areas.

And with NIA into contract planting where a farmer targets to yield 5 tons per hectare, it could massively upgrade Bohol’s status in rice production, despite productivity issues in El Nino hit-areas across the country. (PIABohol)

LOOK MA, NO RAINS. PAG-ASA Bohol meteorologist Engr. Leonard Samar showed a map that reveals no weather disturbances or weather systems that could possibly dump rains within the next few days in Bohol. With a normal rainfall density of 104 millimeters for the first 20 days of the month then, Bohol still has 30.6 millimeters, which is still below normal. Other than the cloud seeded rains, PAG-ASA hopes weather systems can bring in the much needed dump, but none are seen anytime soon. (PIABohol)