PH bracing for P20-B losses from El Niño
The Philippine agriculture sector may incur P20 billion in losses due to a potentially strong El Niño expected by early 2027, according to the Department of Agriculture (DA).
“With values up now and it is a super El Niño, we expect losses to reach P20 billion,” Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said during a Senate hearing on the agency’s budget.
Tiu Laurel said that, in the worst-case scenario, the El Niño phenomenon may affect the livelihood of 2.8 million farmers and fisherfolk nationwide.
“We expect that volume loss can reach up to a million [metric] tons [and the] area affected may reach about 350,000 hectares (ha),” the agriculture chief told lawmakers on Wednesday.
In palay or unhusked rice alone, the DA estimated that production losses could range between 700,000 metric tons (MT) and 1 million MT, depending on the extent and duration of prolonged drought.
With these estimates, palay production for 2026 may decrease to 19.7 million MT. Tiu Laurel attributed this to higher farm input costs, particularly fuel and fertilizer, which affected productivity.
Tiu Laurel also said the production of pork and chicken may decline due to extreme heat.
“The peak of El Niño was originally expected in November 2026. But the latest forecast shows it has been moved to January, February and March, maybe even until April of next year,” he said.
To mitigate the impact of El Niño, Tiu Laurel said the agency is accelerating the development of solar-powered irrigation projects nationwide, adding that they already received P1.6 billion in funding for this purpose from the Office of the President.
“But for next year, we are also requesting to increase the budget for solar irrigation and for aquaculture, we plan to build solar-driven paddle wheels to keep the fish ponds aerated so that they have oxygen and reduce fish kills even in the lakes,” he added.
The DA will also deploy an alternate wetting and drying system, which allows farmers to reduce their water usage for irrigation in rice plantations and methane emissions.
Data from the DA showed that the country’s farm sector sustained P15.91 billion in damage from the strong El Niño episode from June 2023 to March 2024, the highest on the agency’s record.
During this period, the volume of production loss stood at 828,337 MT, while the area affected hit 278,720 ha.
Overall, the agriculture sector recorded P57.78 billion in losses in 2024 as a result of El Niño, a series of typhoons and the prevalence of animal diseases, based on data from the DA.
The sector’s overall production decreased by 2.1 percent to P1.73 trillion in 2024, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.
