Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary Arthur C. Yap said DA is reviving a rice-sufficiency program that was started by the Arroyo Administration in 2001.

"We will continue to have subsidy for seeds this year and the next," he told reporters. "We’ll go into (hybrid rice) seed production in a more massive scale. "

The target, he said, is to aid all farmers situated in a national or communal irrigation systems to migrate from certified seeds or other open pollinated varieties into hybrid rice which should raise their yield average to six MT per hectare from just three to five metric tons (MT).

But while hybrid rice expansion has been a focal growth area in government’s past programs, certified seed expansion particularly in rain-fed lowland may hold a critical growth potential.

"We still have a lot of expansion areas for certified seeds in rain-fed lowland. We can expand to one million (to 1.2 million) hectares," according to DA Rice Director Frisco M. Malabanan.

Farmers planting certified seeds should attain an average of 4.5 MT per hectare, enough to substantially raise the country’s national average of around 3.5 MT.

Since among the poorest rice farmers are found in rain-fed areas that only plant rice once a year (rainy season), government is providing a separate intervention program for these areas during the dry season.

"This is where the Palayamanan system comes in where farmers will plant other high-value crops like vegetables after rice using the water left from the rainy season," Malabanan said.

DA has allocated for 2007 a total of P664 million budget for seed subsidy consisting of P400 million for hybrid rice (at P1,000 each for 400,000 hectares) and a separate P264 million for certified seeds (P440 per hectare over 600,000 hectares).

A growth area that will go with the good seeds is the restoration of national and communal irrigation systems totalling to 52,000 hectares in 2007 costing P3.12 billion (at P60,000 per hectare) and another 67,000 hectares by 2008.

The program will raise production by a yearly five to six percent from 15.3 million MT in 2006 to 16.12 MT in 2007, 17.01 to 17.172 million MT in 2008, 17.86 to 18.202 million MT in 2009, and 18.754 to 19.294 million MT in 2010.

Yap said DA is adopting a system that will concentrate growth in 37 "focused provinces."

"We want to rationalize our investments. These provinces are where 80 percent of production comes from. I’ve also asked BAR (Bureau of Agricultural Research) to put stand alone computer systems in farflung areas so they can transmit problems and give advice," he said.

Government’s technical assistance will be focused on these areas which have consistently shown marked improvement in their rice production although the seed subsidies can be availed of too in areas outside these.

At the same time, clustering of areas where an integrated assistance (technology, seed, irrigation, credit, post-harvest) is given to farmers on a contiguous 100-hectare area within one kilometer radius has already been implemented by DA. This is in order to improve efficiency of the technical assistance, cut costs, and maximize assets use.

The first 15 provinces are Nueva Ecija, Isabela, Pangasinan, Iloilo, Cagayan, Tarlac, Camarines Sur, Sultan Kudratat, Negros Occidental, Oriental Mindoro, North Cotabato, Pampanga, South Cotabato, Bulacan, and Bohol.