The Department of Agriculture-Philippine Rice Research Institute (DA-PhilRice) has started releasing rice seeds to registered farmers as the dry season begins.

DA-PhilRice has allocated 33,500 bags of rice seeds for farmers in this province, according to Office of the Provincial Agriculturist’s rice report officer Christian Dubria.

Of the total allocation, 1,200 bags have been delivered, including 100 to farmers in Anini-y, 300 to Tobias Fornier, and 400 bags each to Sibalom and San Jose de Buenavista recipients.

Dubria said in an interview that farmers listed in the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture received two bags or 40 kilograms of seeds per hectare.

“As of Sept. 30, we have just received a report of around 3,000 hectares of land newly planted with rice,” he said.

He said farmers in Antique have just harvested their production for the wet season that ended on Sept. 15.

Of the 17,500 hectares planted with rice during the wet season, only 12,553.78 hectares were harvested last month.

“Some of the planted rice lands in the province were damaged due to the southwest monsoon last month,” he said.

“We encourage farmers to have their planted rice farms insured with the Philippine Rice Insurance Corporation so that whenever there is a calamity, they could get indemnity,” he added. (PNA)