Philippine rice farmers facing tough times

Seed Daily, via Agence France-Presse: Thousands of rice farmers in the northern Philippines are facing hardship and going further into debt after a typhoon mowed down stalks a week before harvest, officials said. Swathes of rice farms were laid to waste or heavily flooded after Typhoon Parma scythed through the farming provinces of Cagayan, Isabela and Ilocos with hurricane-force winds and heavy rains.

"No amount of preparation would have prepared us for this," Cagayan province Governor Alvaro Antonio said, after Parma dumped nearly half a metre (20 inches) of rain across the rice bowl over the weekend. Disaster officials and farmers in these areas described scenes in which large rice farms were turned into massive lakes and rice stalks with their nearly ripened grain blown down.

"The floodwaters started rising before dusk Sunday, one week before the rice harvest," David Ortal, 44, a farmer near the town of Batac in Ilocos, told AFP by telephone. "The waters ebbed at dawn Monday, so the mature grains may be saved yet. However, the late plantings that had just flowered are likely lost."

The Cagayan Valley and Ilocos regions account for nearly 17 percent of the Philippines' total rice farming area, according to the statistics office…..

Once a powerful Super Typhoon, Parma crossed over the northern tip of Luzon Island, the Philippines, on October 3, 2009, as a Category 1 typhoon. Shot by NASA