| Pest infestation feared in South Cot as dry spell worsens |
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| by MindaNews | |
| Tuesday, 09 March 2010 06:27 | |
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KORONADAL CITY (MindaNews/08 March)— Grasshoppers, black bugs and army worms may begin attacking agricultural crops next month as the dry spell spawned by the El Nino phenomenon has shown no signs of abating, an agriculture official said Monday. Reynaldo H. Legaste, South Cotabato chief agriculture officer, issued the warning as he announced the postponement of cloud seeding operations scheduled last week owing to unfavorable conditions. Since the start of the year, rains had hardly come to South Cotabato, with the El Nino-induced dry spell, Legaste said, wreaking havoc on agricultural crops worth nearly P54 million so far. The drought has affected 3,600 hectares of corn fields with the damage valued at P43 million while palay farms incurred losses of P11 million covering 1,800 hectares, latest data from the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist showed. If rains would not come in the next few weeks, some 6,000 hectares of irrigation-dependent palay farms face the danger of destruction across the province, Legaste said. South Cotabato, a major agricultural producing province, covers this city and 10 other municipalities. Leolito Siase, coordinator of the Bureau of Soils and Water Management, said that South Cotabato was the first among the provinces in Central Mindanao to request for cloud seeding operations. He said cloud seeding operations will be conducted in the watershed areas of the province. Inducing artificial rains is best when plenty of dense cumulonimbus cloud, usually in the shape of mushrooms, is in formation, he noted. Legaste said lack of rainfall has drawn rats to the farms in the upper valley portion of South Cotabato, particularly in the town of T’boli, which has been recommended by the provincial agriculture office to be placed under a state of calamity. But that is just the start of the plague caused by the dry spell, the agriculture executive warned. Should rains fail to fall by April to May, expect the grasshoppers, as well as army worms, to invade agricultural farms, he said. Grasshoppers, which have become a delicacy in the province, are particularly destructive since a swarm could swiftly devastate crops by eating the leaves. In the 1998 El Nino that wrecked Mindanao, swarms of grasshoppers invaded the farms in South Cotabato, Legaste recalled. Black bugs may also surface with a prolonged dry spell, the official warned. (MindaNews) Share this story through the following Social Media sites:            |
