The Department of Agriculture (DA) is giving out free bags of white and yellow corn seeds thrown in with two bags of inorganic fertilizers for qualified corn growers tilling up to a hectare of land planted to the commodity.
Under Memorandum Order 6 – 2023, an 18-kilogram bag of genetically modified or hybrid corn seeds or 20 kilograms of improved open-pollinated variety corn seeds plus two bags of inorganic fertilizers are provided for each hectare (ha) of planted corn.
Qualified farmers are those registered with the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture with a corn production area of at least one-half hectare and preferably a member of an active corn cluster organization.
The program covers both yellow and white corn varieties and start on the first cropping season of the year in so-called priority corn production areas including new or idle lands, crop or varietal shifting and with average grain yield lower than 4.20 metric tons (MT) per hectare for yellow corn and 2.50 MT per hectare for white corn.
DA regional offices will determine the volume of seeds and fertilizers appropriate for the area to be planted by beneficiaries.
The program aims to increase the grain yield per hectare of yellow and white corn by 3 percent annually, increase the income of corn farmers as well as increase the supply of yellow and white corn for feeds and food.
Although the production of corn in the country is rising because of the support of farmers and other stakeholders, “there (remains) a gap between supply and requirements of the different corn processors.”
“At present, local yellow corn production is far below the total requirements of feed millers. To fill in the gap, feed millers opted to import yellow corn and feed wheat from other countries. Despite the increase in production, the local yellow corn-feed sufficiency is only about 59 percent in 2021. Other feed millers are also using cassava in their feed formulation and supplied about 6 to 7 percent of the requirements,” the memorandum noted.
The DA said demand for white corn is also increasing for food and for other industrial uses.
In a separate statement, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) falling inventory stocks of both rice and corn at the start of December last year.
The report noted that as of December 1, 2022, total rice stocks inventory in the country stood at 2.53 million metric tons (MT), down by 4.3 percent compared with 2.65 million MT the previous November.
However, the rice stock for the period was higher by 6.6 percent compared to the 2.38 million MT recorded from a year ago in December 2021.
A majority or 58.2 percent of total rice stocks inventory in December last year were from households, followed by 36.8 percent from commercial warehouses, wholesalers and retailers and the remaining 4.9 percent from National Food Authority (NFA) depositories.
The PSA noted the country’s corn stock inventory totaled 454,030 MT as of December 1, 2022, a 24.8 percent decline from 603,670 MT the previous November that year.
The corn stock inventory was lower by 19.3 percent from December 2021’s inventory level of 562,840 MT.
