TABUK City, Kalinga – More than 3,000 farmers in the province affected by super typhoon ‘Lawin’ last year, received free rice seeds from the Department of Agriculture (DA).
Joe Casibang, Rice Program Coordinator of the Office of Provincial Agriculturist, reported the assistance consisted of free one bag inbred rice seeds per hectare. The seeds were on time for the first cropping planting that started last January.
Another assistance that comes with the ‘Lawin aid’ is DA’s rice seeds and fertilizer subsidy under the High Yielding Technology Adaptation (HYTA) program where farmer-beneficiaries get one bag rice seeds and two bags urea at 50 percent discount.
But under the HYTA, farmers do not pay their cost-counterpart to DA. Instead they remit to their associations as seed capital for their own farming needs, Casibang clarified.
There are 1,600 farmers given certified rice seeds plus two bags urea, while 300 others got hybrid rice seeds and 2 bags urea.
In a related development, DA pushes Precision Farming using research and demonstration farm system in Tabuk being the center of the rice production program in the province.
Under this, assigned Rice Crop Managers (RCM) apply on-line farming technology on selected demo-farms while DA provides subsidy on required farm inputs amounting to P12,000 per hectare.
There are about 100,000 hectares being used as demo-farms under the program. (Larry Lopez/PIA–CAR)