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The El Niño-induced drought continues to wreak havoc on crops and livestock across the country, raising the value of losses to more than a third of what the Department of Agriculture (DA) reported just a week earlier.
The DA said on Thursday that the extreme heat and lack of rain had resulted in P5.9 billion in agricultural damage as of April 30, equivalent to about 34.9 percent of the P4.3 billion recorded in its April 23 bulletin.
The agriculture department has been monitoring the effects of the El Niño weather phenomenon since its onset in July 2023 and started reporting the damage from the drought it has been causing in January this year.
It reported on Thursday that the drought had affected 113,585 farmers and fishers in 12 of the country’s 17 regions with the volume of production losses amounting to 255,467 metric tons in 104,402 hectares (ha) of agricultural land.
Rice accounted for 53.21 percent, or P3.14 billion, of total losses with 129,350 MT in 58,226 ha damaged.
Corn comprised 29.8 percent, or P1.76 billion of the overall damage. High-value crops accounted for P958.06 million, or 16.23 percent of the total.
Losses to fisheries, and livestock and poultry amounted to P33.8 million and P7.9 million, respectively.
The DA said crops being raised in 75,873 ha affected by the long dry spell could still be recovered, but it did not give an estimate of their potential production volume.
The affected regions are Cordillera, Ilocos, Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon, Calabarzon, Mimaropa, Bicol, Western Visayas, Eastern Visayas, Zamboanga Peninsula, Davao and Soccsksargen.
The losses from the effects of the current El Niño are not as severe as during the period from the late 1990s to the 2010s, according to DA records.
In terms of value lost, the agriculture sector suffered P17.
