The country’s farm output growth in the nine months to September slowed to 1.5 percent from a year earlier on dismal production in the crops sub-sector, which contracted 0.15 percent during the period, the Department of Agriculture said Monday.

A senior agriculture official said farm production could slow further in the fourth quarter due to crop and infrastructure damage caused by recent typhoons.

Agriculture accounts for a fifth of the country's gross domestic product but employs nearly four in every 10 Filipinos. In the first nine months of 2008, farm output expanded at a faster clip of 4.16 percent on year.

For the third quarter alone, farm production increased 1.55 percent year-on-year, a slower pace than 3.25 percent a year earlier.

A senior agriculture official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the extensive damage to farmlands wrought by a series of typhoons since late September will make it difficult for the department to achieve its earlier projected growth of 3 percent for all of 2009. (Dow Jones)