BAGUIO CITY – At least 7,393 farmers in Cordillera have lost their main source of livelihood this year as the El Niño phenomenon destroyed the region’s entire corn crop for the dry season.

According to agriculture authorities, the lost corn crops include those planted last October to December for harvesting from January to February.

The damaged corn plants were planted in over 30,000 hectares of land in Kalinga, Ifugao, Mountain Province, and parts of Apayao.

A report from the Apayao provincial government said only corn planted in some areas in the province which experienced rains last month survived.

Earlier, officials of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in the Cordillera declared the whole dry season corn crop in the affected areas lost to drought and called for assistance from both the national and local governments to help farmers recover from heavy losses estimated at over P300 million.

The affected corn growing areas are Paracelis in Mountain Province with 6,960 hectares; Alfonso Lista, Aguinaldo, Lamut, Lagawe in Ifugao with a total of 20,969 hectares and Tabuk City, Pinukpok, Rizal and Tanudan in Kalinga with 5,610 hectares.

However, DA-CAR officials claimed the El Niño phenomenon has yet to significantly affect the dry season rice crop of the region because of sufficient water supply from various communal and national irrigation systems in Mountain Province, Kalinga and Ifugao.

A report from the Cordillera office of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) showed the available stream flows in the region’s national irrigation systems servicing major rice-growing areas in Kalinga, Ifugao and Apayao are still sufficient.

However, by March 22, the decreasing stream flow in the river systems could result in a reduction of rice farms to be planted within the month, the NIA said.

If the dry spell will extend up to June this year, agriculture officials said, the region’s rice produce for the dry season will suffer and result in the loss of the opportunities in reaching the quota for the export of heirloom rice to the United States.

Despite being the watershed cradle of Northern Luzon, the Cordillera is one of the hardest hit regions by the prolonged dry spell because of the existence of denuded watersheds and forests that could no longer hold water due to the lack of trees.

The agriculture department encouraged farmers in areas affected by the drought to use shallow tube wells to save their crops which are on the flowering, harvestable and vegetative stages.

This developed as Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal said he will issue an “oratio emperata” or a special prayer to guide the faithful in coping with the effects of the El Niño phenomenon, now causing drought and water shortage in some parts of Luzon and Mindanao.

Vidal said the faithful needs to be informed of the situation.

An “oratio imperata” is a special prayer for a special intention that the Pope or bishop of a diocese may call to be said during mass in all parishes.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said the El Niño phenomenon is expected to worsen in the coming months.

Meanwhile, the Philippine Crop Insurance Corp. (PCIC) is urging farmers in this province and in other rice-producing areas to insure their crops this planting season as protection against possible damage from El Niño phenomenon.

PCIC 7 Manager Dominico Digamon said the intense tropical heat brought by the El Niño has already destroyed millions of pesos worth of crops in many provinces.

Digamon, who hails from Bohol, said insuring crops has never been more relevant with the effects of the El Niño and farmers should have their crops insured to recover the cost of production through insurance indemnity should their farm get affected by the dry spell.

“We assure the farmers that insurance claims for damaged farms and crops will not be hard,” he said.

The PCIC has paid a total of P3.539 million to farmers for Central Visayas alone, representing insurance coverage for 2009, he said.

Digamon said the PCIC has increased its insurance coverage for palay, a high-value commercial crop and other agricultural produce by some 270 percent.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) in Central Visayas has prepared measures to mitigate the effects of the El Niño expected to affect cropping in the first semester of 2010. (with reports by PNA and Mars Mosqueda)