Philippines see rice production exceeding demand

UNMILLED rice production would reach 3.46 million tons in the second quarter, more than the projected demand of 3.3 million tons and should keep the grain’s prices stable, the Agriculture Department said Thursday. It said it also expected stable prices for chicken and fish, and that sugar prices should “soften” even with the drought brought by El Niño. Government attempts to induce rain have mostly failed, but the Soils Bureau said Thursday it was optimistic its cloud-seeding would help ease El Niño’s effects on crops. “We are duty-bound to implement this program as long as there are requests for cloud-seeding,” said Lilian Naga, head of the agency’s water division. About 221 cloud-seeding sorties had been conducted nationwide as of March 11, but most of them had failed, Naga said. “In fact, in our assessment about 20 percent or even less had been successful,” she said. “We’ve been the target of many criticisms as to why we continue to implement this program despite its apparent futility. We put our lives on the line because we have a directive to implement the program.” An agency team usually does a sortie once it decides there are enough clouds to be seeded. It carries 11 25-kilogram bags of salt and seeds for an hour and a half per sortie, and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. A sortie costs P22,400 per hour, including the Cessna plane’s rental, but “most of the time the salt seeded on the clouds melts due to extreme heat,” Naga said.