‘Juan’ exacts heavy losses on Alaminos’ agriculture
THE city of Alaminos, a major palay producer in the province, had expected a bumper harvest in the last quarter but all the expected revenues from it vanished in thin air when Typhoon Juan made its presence felt in the city.
A report of the city disaster coordinating council (CDCC) showed the typhoon left more than P 77.7M worth of damages to the city’s agriculture sector. These include rice, P63.9M; high value commercial crops (HVCC), P4.2M; and fisheries sector, P9.6M.
City agriculturist Arceli Talania said that 3, 016 hectares of rice lands were laid to devastated by the typhoon.
She said most of the palays were on the milking and ripening stages and ready for harvest while the HVCCs were on fruiting and vegetative stages.
Talania said “when a palay is lodged in water for 24 hours due to inundation and strong winds, yield loss is immediately calculated at 15-30%”.
“So even if our farmers will be able harvest their crops in the next few days, they have already incurred considerable loss in income,” she stressed further.
She said the city can no longer meet its target rice yield of 5.5 metric tons per hectare this year.
Fortunately, she said the farmers can at least look forward to the Braganza administration’s rice seed subsidy program to cushion the impact of their losses.
The typhoon also didn’t spare the 5-hectare Maria Valdez Cornelio Techno-Demo Farm in barangay Tangcarang as most of the commodities planted that include organic rice, papaya, ampalaya, cucumber, water melon, honeydew were either submerged in rainwater or totally damaged by the strong winds.
Plastic covers of the five units of Maligaya-type Greenhouse were also blown-away by the wind, according to the report.
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