A looming ood crisis
WHEN typhoon “Lando” (international name: Koppu) first made landfall in Casiguran, Aurora — my home province — last Sunday, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) classified it a Category-4 super-typhoon, which is one step below super-typhoon Yolanda’s.
Before weakening in the Sierra Madre mountains, Lando carried 185-kph winds. Up to 23,000 people were preventively evacuated, which resulted in the minimal number of casualties.
Yet, Lando dumped unprecedented amounts of rainfall in Central Luzon, the Cordilleras, Cagayan Valley, and the Ilocos Region, causing landslides and massive flooding. And it appears this was how the typhoon wrought the most damage in the agricultural sector, which as of last Thursday, government officials estimated to have suffered P6.43 billion in losses.
Most of the damage — around 5.7 billion — was to rice lands, given that the provinces hit comprise the Rice Bowl of the Philippines. Nearly 384,000 metric tons of production were lost from the 272,000 hectares affected, as farmers expressed particular dismay because the typhoon arrived just a few days before the harvest. Equally damaged were the livestock ( 3.9 billion), high-value crops ( 528.9 million), corn ( 88.32 million), and fisheries ( 20.96 million) sectors.
These losses add up to those already incurred because of this year’s El Niño — the regular warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean that impacts worldwide weather — which meteorologists have dubbed the most severe in recent history.
In May, the Department of Agriculture (DA) estimated that El Niño already caused up to 1.65 billion in agricultural damage, affecting a little more than 38,000 hectares across 19 provinces. Some estimate that up to a million agricultural workers could lose their jobs this year due to the phenomenon.
Scientists project that such extreme weather will only persist to cause even more damage to our agriculture. Typhoon Lando’s arrival amid a severe El Niño raise an early and urgent warning of looming food scarcity and price spike.
Email: angara.ed@gmail.com