The Department of Agriculture is adopting a third cropping season for palay starting this year as part of its strategy to increase the country's rice production by at least 20 percent yearly in a bid to achieve self-sufficiency, Secretary Arthur Yap said.

In a statement from his office, Yap said the adoption of the “quick turnaround” or QTA program, which yielded a 20 percent increase in palay harvests last year by inserting a third cropping season, will help the DA raise palay output in 2008 by 5.78 percent.

The figure is equivalent to a peak of 17.3 million metric tons and achieves a national self-sufficiency level of 92 percent, he said.

Yap also said if the rice industry institutionalizes the third cropping season, it can already produce 20 percent of the target for a given year.

“We are now looking at off-season production sites for the QTA this year,” he said.

Last year, the DA tapped 101,000 hectares for its QTA program, implemented mostly in Mindanao, to offset production losses in Luzon farmlands hit hard by a mid-year dry spell.

Regional Executive Director Larry Nacionales earlier said Western Visayas was also identified as one of the areas for the DA QTA project.

Region 6 has 313,959 hectares intended for rice production with an actual plantation of 244,978 hectares. The DA has identified 20,000 to 22,000 hectares for the QTA program.

The DA also installed 45 flatbed mechanical rice dryers in Western Visayas starting September last year in recognition of the region's bigger contribution in achieving the national rice production target, the DA statement said.

In fact, DA 6 aims to increase the region's rice production to 2.2 million metric tons in 2008, Nacionales said in the same statement.

The 2007 target was pegged at only 1.99 million metric tons, but the region already surpassed its target production in 2007 by November since production during the first 11 months last year was already estimated at 1.99 million metric tons.

In 2006, Western Visayas posted a 109 percent rice sufficiency in 2006 when its total production was 1.987 million metric tons.*NLG

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