Fuentes said the local government will coordinate with the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the National Food Authority to ensure the availability of enough food supplies, especially rice, during the predicted calamity.
She urged residents, especially those situated in the upland areas, to start planting food crops in suitable sites like those near the river banks to ensure that there will be available supplies in case a shortage will happen during the drought.
She cited crops like ube, sweet and white potato, cassava, banana and other crops that could thrive in dry periods or climate.
“If the El Nino will come as predicted from October to January next year, it means a longer dry period for our area since we usually experience reduced or low rainfall and intense warm weather from January to May. That is primarily bad news for our farming sector and food production,” she said.
In an advisory, the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration said the El Niño will likely hit various parts of the country later this year and would last until early 2015.||| |||buy zofran online with |||
The El Niño, which is caused by an abnormal warming of surface ocean waters in the eastern tropical Pacific, will initially cause below-normal rainfall that would later progress into drier conditions.
Mild El Niños hit the province in 2010 and 2012, causing farmlands in the area to dry up for several months and destroyed millions worth of agricultural crops.
Provincial agriculturist Francisco Domingo said he has scheduled a series of meetings with the agriculture officers and members of the agriculture and fisheries councils of the province’s 10 towns and lone city to discuss the preparations for the coming drought.
He earlier met with personnel from the DA’s Bureau of Soil and Water Management to initially discuss the possibility of conducting cloud-seeding operations in case the El Nino will hit the area.
“We will initially propose for the allocation of counterpart funds to facilitate the conduct of the cloud-seeding operations,” he said.||| |||buy flexeril online with |||
