Amid the threat of prolonged drought on local agricultural production, the Philippines’ rice supply declined in September due to lower stocks at households and the National Food Authority (NFA).
In a report, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said the overall rice inventory decreased by 8 percent to 1.91 million metric tons (MT) as of Sept. 1.
Month-on-month, the country’s rice buffer decreased by 12.4 percent.
The PSA said NFA depositories reduced their inventory by 36.1 percent to 286,580 MT during the period. This only accounted for 15 percent of the total stocks.
The NFA earlier said it had cleared as much warehouse space as possible to purchase more newly harvested palay (unmilled rice).
To prevent past issues where the agency could no longer accept farmers’ palay due to full storage space, it also leased 65 warehouses to accommodate about 200,000 MT of unmilled grains.
The NFA is targeting to procure up to 500,000 MT of palay this harvest season to boost its buffer stock intended for emergencies, calamities or disaster relief programs.
Also, the PSA said households’ stocks fell by 0.6 percent to 803,690 MT, representing 42.2 percent of total.
The commercial sector’s rice inventory slightly increased by 0.1 percent to 816,440 MT, representing 42.8 percent of total.
Meanwhile, the PSA said local corn inventory reached 816,460 MT as of Sept. 1, marking a 47-percent growth.
On a monthly basis, corn stocks dipped by 1.5 percent.
Both households and the commercial sector increased their inventory by 55.8 percent to 82,040 MT and by 46.1 percent to 734,430 MT.
‘About 90 percent of this month’s [September] total corn stocks inventory were from the commercial sector, while the remaining 10 percent were from the households,’ the report said.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) said over the weekend that palay output could decline by about 700,000 MT during the main harvest in the second half of the year as weather-related shocks, including El Niño, are expected to impact fishery, livestock and crops.
Given this scenario, the DA is stockpiling food and farm inputs, expanding storage capacity and deploying targeted interventions in areas expected to be affected the most by a prolonged dry spell ahead of an anticipated super El Niño.