A party-list representing the agriculture sector said that government must institutionalize measures that will mitigate the effects of climate change.
With damage to agriculture steadily rising with the onset of rain, AGRI Party-list Secretary General Benjie Martinez said that unless climate-adaptive strategies are employed, efforts to ensure food security will be hampered.
According to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), a total of 57.8 million pesos’ worth of infrastructure and agriculture were damaged from heavy rains and flooding brought by the southwest monsoon or habagat enhanced by tropical storm “Karding.”
“Unless climate-adaptive strategies are employed, efforts to ensure food security will be hampered.”
Of that amount, damage to agriculture was pegged at 24.3 million pesos.
Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture (DA) reported that damage to agriculture due to typhoons Henry, Inday and Josie reached 1.6 billion pesos.
Records from the DA-Disaster and Risk Reduction Management Operation Center showed that at least 95,246 hectares of rice fields or about 19,892 metric tons of rice and 51,678 farmers in Ilocos, Central Luzon, Calabarzon, Mimaropa and Western Visayas were affected.
Damage to fisheries, which affected 1,050 fisherfolk, a majority of them in the Cordilleras, Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon and Calabarzon, was pegged at 147 million pesos.
“We have to do something beyond extending aid to farmers and fisherfolk whose livelihoods are affected after every calamity, which is unsustainable,” said Martinez, who stressed that the issue of climate change is one that should be addressed at the soonest possible time, especially given that the Philippines is one of the countries most affected by it.
The latest Global Climate Risk Index Report 2018, developed by the German think tank German Watch that covers 182 countries worldwide, has ranked the Philippines as the 5th most affected country covering the 20-year period from 1997 to 2016.
“We have to do something beyond extending aid to farmers and fisherfolk whose livelihoods are affected after every calamity, which is unsustainable.”
Martinez also again called on the Senate to pass its version of a bill expanding insurance coverage for farmers and fisherfolk—a measure that if passed will benefit 5.5 million small-hold farms and 1.7 million fishermen who are most vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather.
Earlier this year, the Lower House approved on third and final reading House Bill No. 6923, or “An Act Strengthening the PCIC,” repealing Presidential Decree 1467, which created the government-owned and controlled corporation attached to the DA.
The bill seeks to allot five to ten billion pesos crop insurance to guarantee immediate assistance of farmers affected by calamities despite the absence of the so-called total wipe-out situation.
