Philippines: NTA Urges Farmers to Plant Tobacco Earlier than Usual

Source from:  GMA News  08/07/2014

Farmers in the Ilocos region were encouraged to plant tobacco in September or earlier than the usual cropping season to avoid the effects of the El Niño phenomenon.
 
National Tobacco Administration administrator Edgardo Zaragoza said that the main measure to take was early planting of the crops, adding that NTA would provide farmers with calendars that highlight proposed dates of farm activities to help them keep on schedule.
 
Other mitigating measures proposed include delineation of areas to evaluate the availability of water for irrigation and to determine types of tobacco to be planted.
 
The proposals were made in line with predictions from the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, based on a majority of climate models that a dry spell caused by the El Niño may begin in the middle of this year.
 
Farmers should start sowing Virginia tobacco "as early as first week of September" in order to transplant them by mid-October, while the Burley variety should be sowed by mid-September "for transplanting by early November," said NTA industrial research department manager Dr. Roberto Bonoan.
 
With this new schedule, Virginia tobacco can be harvested before the dry spell "is at its peak by early part of 2015," Bonoan added.
 
Bonoan said that most tobacco farmers were planting rice by September, so they should "set aside a portion of their farm" for tobacco "to avoid delays of sowing."
 
The weather phenomenon has caused low quality yield of tobacco in the past, like in the last cropping season, the harvest of which suffered from the lack of rainfall during the crops' supposed growth period, the NTA said.
 
Tobacco production -- regardless of El Niño -- "is by itself very labor-intensive and costly," said a GMA News Online report on 2010, when the dry spell brought by the El Niño phenomenon dried out the river that irrigated tobacco field in Ilocos Sur.
 
Production of Virginia tobacco -- opted by most farmers there -- "is the costliest of all," reaching about P146,000 per hectare at the time, compared to P120,000 needed to plant other varieties, the report said.
 
Limited resources pushed farmers to not plant more than a hectare of tobacco, it added. Enditem