84% prod’n sufficiency but rice net exporter?

Harmonization of

agri data, on -OPA

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol (PIA)—In the cropping year of 2024 when Bohol experienced a severe drought which started in December of 2023, records from the Office of the Provincial Agriculture (OPA) showed that the total harvest reached 817,000 metric tons.

At a conservative 60 to 65 percent milling recovery rate, Bohol should have at least 490,000 metric tons of milled rice.

And at a population of 1.4 million Boholanos, each eating 115 kilos of rice per year, the current demand is 161,000 metric tons, Bohol is currently producing over 300 percent than what Boholanos need.

In fact, Quirog also said that in 2023, which was a decidedly a better year for agriculture, the OPA tracked 4.5 million metric tons of rice harvest.

This could be the reason why Boholanos still heap up good rice stocks, enough to inspire market confidence and tame the provincial inflation rate.

“However, with only 84% rice sufficiency according to an official government data source, there is a need for data harmonization with the disparity,” remarks Provincial Agriculturist Liza Quirog, at the Kapihan sa PIA.

The fact that the data mismatch also affects the way people should plan, Quirog bared that there has already been three series of harmonization workshops with the Department of Agriculture.

The harmonization workshop involved municipal agriculturists, farm technicians and presidents or irrigation associations and people’s organizations to harmonize [planting] areas and the data and the preferred varieties, she reported.

By the next week, Quirog added that another harmonization workshop together with the Philippine Statistics Authority.

This is a good thing, so that we at the OPA under the Provincial Government of Bohol and the DA in region 7 would know the real figures in the percentage of our farmers have not been reached by the intervention from government and the non-government organizations who helped. .

As to how the data incongruence happened, Quirog said, “it is very possible that the data that the PSA gathered included in their sampling, farm areas that are not in our intervention beneficiaries for many reasons, like their non-registration in the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA) for farmers and fisherfolks.”

If a farmer is not RSBSA registered, they are ineligible for the national government interventions.

The national government has set aside subsidies for hybrid rice seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and mechanization from land preparation to planting and harvesting to milling.

To farmers who are not in the RSBSA, the Provincial Government, seeing their situation, also set aside local interventions, for farmers for as long as the Office of their Municipal Agriculture can prove that they really have farms but have not been registered or updated their registration in the RSBSA for several reasons.

With possible farms and farmers not in the RSBSA but are still producing good harvest, they could have caused the skewed data which only harmonization by stakeholders can settle. (PIABohol)

MORE THAN SUFFICIENT. If the data could be harmonized, palay production in Bohol could already be hundreds of times sufficient, based on the current OPA data from MAOS and rice technicians who withdraw government interventions for the farms listed in the RSBSA, reports Provincial Agriculturist Liza Quirog. (PIABOhol)