Business NEWS

Agriculture Secretary William Dar has joined the call to further open up the Philippine economy despite the COVID-19 pandemic persistence.

Ayala-led Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) has designed a credit facility that specifically targets to provide funding to commercial hog raisers who were affected by the African Swine Fever (ASF).  

Food and agriculture exporters from other countries selling their products to the Philippines save millions of money because of the government’s lenient food safety regulations, a local exporter said.  

The agriculture sector is expected to contract by more than 1 percent within the first three months of this year on the weight of the lingering impact of strong typhoons, namely Quinta, Rolly, and Ulysses, said a top official of an international think tank.”For the first quarter of 2021, we are projecting that the overall growth rate of the volume of production in agriculture is -1.21 percent,” said Glenn B. Gregorio, director at Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA).

Some of the country’s agri-fishery commodities, such as rice, pork, fish, and chicken, were sold in select markets in Metro Manila higher than their suggested retail price (SRP) almost throughout the holidays.

After an “unexpectedly challenging year” for the Philippine agriculture sector, the Department of Agriculture (DA) must find a way to execute concrete actions that are “wiser, effective, efficient, and sustainable,” said a top official of an international think tank.

The Department of Agriculture (DA-7) has equipped farmers in Negros Oriental with trainings on production and marketing for cacao, corn, cassava and hybrid rice to enhance their skills and knowledge on new farming technologies for sustainable income and livelihood from agriculture.

It’s less than two weeks before the year ends but the agriculture sector still keeps on incurring damages due to typhoons.As of Wednesday, the total damage and losses the sector incurred due to Tropical Storm Vicky already stood at P111.01 million, affecting 15,933 farmers and fisherfolk and 19,846 hectares of agricultural areas, according to the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM).

The Department of Agriculture (DA-7) with the Cebu Provincial Agriculture Office (PAO), Local Government Unit (LGU) of Asturias, Cebu and Virginia Farms Incorporated conducted the corn varietal derby in Asturias town in Cebu 1st week of December this year to showcase corn production of various corn varieties.

Even if a group of farmers in the Philippines said it may take a while for them to recover from Quinta, Rolly, and Ulysses, a foreign agency is convinced that these typhoons that struck the country last month will not have a significant impact on next year’s production.

The Philippines may still end up importing 600,000 metric tons (MT) of corn next year despite the government’s new policies limiting the issuance of Sanitary and Phytosanitary import clearances (SPS-IC) on the staple as well as feed wheat.  

The Philippine government has lifted the ban on Brazilian poultry meat more than four months since making such a decision.  

The agriculture sector of Cebu, considered the ‘Queen City of the South’, will get an allocation of P454 million out of the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) budget for next year.

Palay prices slightly picked up during the first week of November compared to previous weeks, a data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has committed more funding to DELIVER-e application, a farmers-to-buyers digital platform recently launched in the Philippines. 

As a result of the government’s decision to regulate the issuance of import permits on rice, the Philippines will now end the year with slightly lower imports of the staple.

It’s good news for both local hog raisers and meat importers after the Department of Agriculture (DA) moved to set aside a portion of its Bayanihan 2 budget to fund the establishment of four meat cold storage warehouses and meat-cutting facilities.

The fatal animal disease African Swine Fever (ASF) that reached the Philippines’ backyard farms in August last year is now on its third wave, so far resulted in the culling of more than 400,000 pigs across the country.