Farm production contracted 1 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2015, as the rural sector bore the impact of the El Niño dry spell and typhoon Lando, the Philippine Statistics Authority said Thursday.
PSA said the figure brought the average growth of the agriculture and fisheries sector to 0.1 percent in 2015, slower than the 1.8-percent expansion in 2014.
Total agriculture production at current prices reached P479 billion in the fourth quarter, down by 6.6 percent from P448 billion last year.
PSA said the crops sub-sector fell 2.69 percent in the fourth quarter, as the dry spell cut rice and corn harvests.
Palay or unmilled rice production declined 3.8 percent to 7.3 million metric tons in the October-December period from 7.6 million metric tons a year ago.
PSA said the adverse effects of typhoon Lando pulled down palay production in Mountain Province, Apayao, Kalinga, Nueva Ecija, Aurora, Bulacan, Tarlac and Pampanga provinces.
“ The incidence of rice black bug, tungro and rodents, insufficiency of water during the crop’s maturing stage resulted in lower palay production in Calabarzon,” PSA said.
Corn production also fell 6 percent from 1.8 million metric tons in the fourth quarter of 2014 to 1.7 million metric tons in the fourth quarter of 2015, because of the lower yield in Kalinga and Mt. Province.
PSA said that in Cagayan, there was insufficient soil moisture during planting time while crop shifting to cassava, tobacco and sugarcane was reported in Isabela.
Typhoon Lando also affected most corn crops in Nueva Ecija, Aurora, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija and Pampanga.
Sugarcane production went down by 7.7 percent in the fourth quarter to 7.4 million metric tons from 8.92 million metric tons a year earlier, because of the insufficiency in soil moisture and dry spell which affected most of the sugarcane producing provinces.
Coconut production rose 1.7 to 4.05 million metric tons from 3.9 million metric tons in 2014.
The livestock sub-sector grew by 3.7 percent, led by high production of carabao, cattle and hog.
PSA said the poultry sub-sector grew 4.2 percent in the fourth quarter on strong production of chicken, chicken egg and duck egg.
The fishery sub-sector sank 4.28 in the fourth quarter from a growth of 4.46 percent in 2014 due to the drop in milkfish, roundscad and skipjack production.
