Before the end of February, at least 10 more provinces will be affected by the continuous adverse effects of El Niño phenomenon in the country, an official has warned.

Earlier, El Niño Task Force spokesperson and Presidential Communications Office (PCO) Assistant Secretary Joey Villarama announced that 41 provinces have been affected by the phenomenon. However, he did not disclose the list of the El Niño hit provinces.

“By the end of February ay inaasahan pong tataas pa po itong mga probinsiya na naaapektuhan ng El Niño, siguro by at least 10 ( By the end of February, it is expected that the number of provinces affected by El Niño will increase, maybe by at least 10),” Villarama said during a forum in Quezon City on Saturday, Feb. 17.

He said the task force is closely monitoring various sectors due to the “strong El Niño” being experienced by the country.

“In terms of what is being monitored at kung ano po iyong binabantayan ng task force, ayon na rin sa direktiba ng ating Pangulo, iyan po ang food security, ang water supply, power supply, health at saka po iyong kung magkakaroon po ng pagtaas sa mga presyo (In terms of what is being monitored and what is being monitored by the task force, according to the directive of our President, that is food security, water supply, power supply, health and then if there is an increase in prices),” he said in a news forum in Quezon City.

The spokesperson noted that agricultural damage, in rice and corn, has been recorded in the regions of Western Visayas and Zamboanga Peninsula.

Per the data of the Department of Agriculture (DA) as of Feb. 8, the damage and losses caused by El Nino in Western Visayas and Zamboanga Peninsula has reached P151.3 million.

The agency noted that nearly 4,000 farmers in the said areas have been affected by the phenomenon.

The DA said that most of the damage and losses were incurred on rice and corn that are in their reproductive stage.

Villarama noted that there are “other regions now affected by the dry spell but authorities have yet to receive a report on the extent of damage…”

Regarding the temperature, Villarama stated that according to the most recent briefing from the state weather bureau, it might get as high as 40 degrees in Northern Luzon and as high as 36.5 degrees in Metro Manila.

To mitigate the impact of the phenomenon, the DA has recently announced that it will implement rice farming strategies that utilize less water.

The farming strategies are “Alternate Wetting and Drying" which uses less water for farming, and "Quick Turn Around" or QTA which allows immediate rice replanting right after harvest.

DA Assistant Secretary for Operations U-Nichols Manalo stated that AWD is a water-saving technology that rice farmers can employ to lower their water use in irrigated fields.

Meantime, he said the QTA is a method in which all rice farms after harvest must quickly replant immediately without waiting for the months of the subsequent planting season to begin.

Manalo stated that DA has contacted over one million farmers to install water-saving technologies in around 15,000 hectares of rice fields.

Per the DA, farmers have already started replanting in over 5,500 hectares of rice fields.
The agency aims to implement the quick-turn-around strategy on more than 26,000 hectares.

The DA said such measures were implemented in compliance with President Marcos’ Executive Order (EO) No. 53 which orders the government to streamline, reactivate, and reconstitute the old El Niño task forces under EO No. 16 (s. 2001) and Memorandum Order No. 38 (s. 2019). The EO was signed by the President last Jan. 19.