By Dominique Gabriel G. Bañaga

The ongoing dry spell has already affected 16 hectares of rice fields in the southern part of Negros Occidental, based on the latest monitoring by the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist (OPA).

In a report released on Monday, May 1, OPA head Dr. Edmundo Raul Causing said the dry spell has already caused P500,000 worth of damage to rice crops in the province.

Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson said yesterday they are preparing to give assistance to affected farmers.

However, Lacson said the P15 million budget requested by OPA to combat the effects of the looming El Niño phenomenon must not be generalized, pointing out he wants to know the target results.

“We are result-oriented. In preparing the budget, it should be explained that this is the end-result,” Lacson said.

Local government units in Western Visayas were earlier told by the Department of Agriculture to form their respective El Niño Task Force to help mitigate any calamities related to the dry conditions.

El Niño, a weather phenomenon characterized by unusually warm ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, could affect the normal rainfall pattern in the country, generally resulting in reduced rainfall.

The state weather bureau, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, said over the weekend the probability of the weather phenomenon to occur within the next two months had already reached 70 percent.

Aside from the drought, the public must also prepare for extreme weather conditions when El Niño occurs, as intense tropical cyclones have experienced in the past years, it added./DGB, WDJ