The National Food Authority and the City Agriculture’s Office of Davao city revealed that the city is on its critical level in terms of rice production.
NFA Provincial Manager Edegary H. Roncal said that Davao City is not self-sufficient in rice supply. She revealed that with the present rice consumption of the people in the city, rice production has not been able to cope with demand.
“Hindi self-sufficient ang Davao sa rice supply. May deficit talaga ang ating supply,” said Roncal on Thursday during the Ispeak conference.
“It cannot support itself with its level of consumption every day. Basing on the present consumption of the city, we need 920 metric tons per day,” he added.
Part of the reason why Davao City is incapable of supplying enough rice to its people is the fact that very minimal area of the city is dedicated to rice planting.
“Out of its 150-160,000 hectares of land for agriculture, only less than 2,000 ha is the rice cultivation,” Jovencio Umaging, Operations Head of the City Agriculture Office said. “Basing on total annual production sa rice areas sa Davao, that is good only for 22-25 days. 22-25 days lang pwede pakaunon sa production sa Davao city ang mga tao nga naga consume ug rice. The rest of the year, naga depende ta sa production sa neighboring provinces.”
Roncal and Umaging agreed that Davao Region greatly needs help from neighboring provinces that are self-sufficient like Region 12 and the rice exports coming from other countries. They said that the region needs to augment and to import from other towns and countries to make up for the deficit in rice consumption.
Last January to March, more than 800,000 bags of rice were imported from Vietnam and Thailand for Davao City. Also this May, the region is expecting rice augmentation coming from Iloilo region.
