The Philippine Online Chronicles

The country is facing its worst drought that left millions worth of crops destroyed and severely affecting water and power supply in major provinces.

In Bicol, it has not rained for almost three months in Baao, Camarines Sur, posing great threat to corn farmers. In Iriga City, P10 million worth of corn plants all dried up to lack of rain, inquirer.net reported.

Zambales, one of Luzon’s largest rice producers, has steadily lost productivity over the years, with El Niño exacerbating the farmers’ problems.

In Cagayan, P305 million worth of palay and corn was destroyed by the dry spell, prompting the provincial government to use P7.64 million of its calamity funds to buy water pumps to help farmers cope with the drought.

Last month, the government s projected that this year’s rice harvests would be trimmed by up to 816,312 tons if a severe drought strikes.  Department of Agriculture (DA) Undersecretary Bernie Fondevilla said the fall would be equivalent to five percent of last year's entire yield.

This would be on top of 449,429 tons reduction in corn, 42,362 tons of fish and other marine catch, and 3.08 million tons of other crops, he said in a report.

New York Times reported that the damage to crops is now estimated at more than $61 million. Officials expect the dry spell to last until July.

Conserve water

To address the existing water supply problem, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo asked Filipinos to recycle water. Arroyo also signed Executive Order 278 directing the immediate cutting down of water releases to the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) and National Irrigation Authority (NIA) following the continuous drop of the water level at the Angat Dam and the threat of El Niño.

As of 8 a.m. on February 17, Angat Dam's water level was at 196.41 meters, and the MWSS expects it to fall to a critical level of 180 meters by May or April.

Rice disease

According to DA, the shortage of water due to the El Niño phenomenon may create another problem for the agriculture sector—tungro infestation on rice plantations. Tungro is one of the most destructive rice diseases in Southeast Asia with outbreaks affecting thousands of hectares of farmlands.

Recent outbreaks in the past three years recorded by the DA in Cagayan Valley, Panay Island, Central Mindanao and Southern Mindanao resulted in an estimated yield losses as high as 90 percent and whatever grains left would not fetch a high price due to poor grain quality.

El Nino is an occasional seasonal warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that upsets normal weather patterns from the western seaboard of Latin America to east Africa, and has caused droughts in the Philippines before.

The Philippines suffered a severe drought in 1999 and two milder dry spells in 2004 and 2007.

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