Philippine Rice Industry: Facts and Figures

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Philippine Rice Industry: Facts and Figures

Question	Answer
Has palay production in the Philippines increased over the years?	Yes. Palay Production in the Philippines has tripled from 5.32 million tons in 1970 to a peak of 16.82 million tons in 2008. However, a couple of strong typhoons caused a slight decline in palay production in 2009 to 16.26 million tons.
Has rice production increased?	Rice production, parallel to palay production, has increased by three-fold from 3.34 million tons in 1970 to 10.57 million tons in 2008.
What is the growth rate of palay and rice production?	On average, from 2000 to 2009, palay production in the country increases annually by approximately 500 thousand tons while rice production increases by more than 300 thousand metric tons.
How much rice has Philippines produced in 2009?	In 2009, the Philippines produced a total of 10.22 million tons of rice based on a milling recovery rate of 62.85%.
How much have irrigated, rainfed, and upland areas contributed in terms of palay production?	In 2009, 74.3% of palay production or 12.08 M tons came from irrigated areas; 25.4% or 4.14 M tons from rainfed lowlands; and 0.3% or 0.05 M tons from rainfed uplands.
At what time of the year is the growth rate higher in terms of rice production?	The growth in production is higher during July-December which contributes 55% of the overall growth. The growth in production during January-June contributes the remaining 45%.
What percent of the production growth comes from irrigated areas?	71% of the production increase comes from irrigated area while the remaining 29% comes from rainfed lowland areas. These offset the decrease in production in rainfed upland area, which is declining by around 8000 tons per year since 2000.
Why do we import rice?	The Philippines’ area harvested to rice is very small compared with major rice producing countries in Asia. This is the major reason why we import rice. Although we say that we are an agricultural country, we do not have large land resource to produce our total rice requirement.
How many million hectares are devoted to rice production in the Philippines?	The Philippines have 4.46 million hectares devoted to rice production in 2008 while India has 44, China has 29.49, Indonesia has 12.31, Thailand has 10.25, and Vietnam has 7.41 M hectares.
What is the ratio of population to area harvested in 2008?	If we consider our population, we feed 20 persons per hectare of area harvested to rice. In contrast, Thailand and Vietnam, which are the major rice exporters in the world only feed 7 and 12 persons per hectare of area harvested, respectively.
What is the land area distribution of different ecosystems in terms of palay production?	3.05 million hectares are irrigated; 1.45 million hectares are rainfed lowland; and 0.02 million hectares are rainfed upland.
What is the growth rate of area harvested in the Philippines?	Overall, rainfed upland areas decrease by nearly 7000 ha annually. This decline is offset by the increase in irrigated areas and rainfed lowland areas. The 68% of the increase in area harvested from 2000 to 2009 was due to increase in irrigated areas while 32% was due to increase in rainfed lowland areas.

Source: The Philippine Rice Industry: Facts and Figures. 2010. PhilRice