Agri losses from ‘Lando’ placed at nearly

The agricultural losses that were brought about by Typhoon Lando, the strongest typhoon that hit the country this year, already amounted to nearly 9 billion.

Typhoon Lando arrived in the Philippine Area of Responsibility on October 18 and stayed until October 24.

As of Monday, the estimated cost of damages and losses to agriculture and fisheries have already reached P8.45 billion in Regions I, II, III, IV-A and Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), a data released by the Department of Agriculture (DA) showed.

The most affected areas in the country are still Region II and III, which includes provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino, Aurora, Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Tarlac, and Zambales.

Of the total damages, 7.2 billion worth of losses was recorded in rice, while 780.2 million worth of high-value crops were destroyed.

The DA noted that a field validation in Regions I and III has already started on Monday in order to assess the real worth of damages that the typhoon brought to the country. This will be conducted until October 30.

Such activity will also be done in Region II from November 3 to 7.

The validation team is composed of representatives from DA, Regional Field Offices and Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice). The result of the validation will be considered as the final report of the RFOs affected by Typhoon Lando.

In a previous interview, DA secretary Proceso Alcala said the government will be partially allotting roughly 300 million for the recovery of the country’s agricultural sector, which was impaired by the typhoon.

He noted, however, that the agency may also seek more fund from the national government if needed.

“There is 500 million yearly budget that is allocated for the department every year. [As of now,] we still have 200 million for the interventions for the [damaged] crop and more than 100 million for the infrastructure that was destroyed by the typhoon. But we’re still in the process of checking if this will be enough,” Alcala said.

“If we would need more fund, we are not limited to our [disaster] quick response fund. If we can justify, we can ask more fund from the President [Benigno Aquino III],” he added.

He also said that while the typhoon has resulted to considerable damage in agriculture, the DA also sees it as a chance to negate the potentially more devastating effects of El Niño on agricultural production.