RICE TEAM. Former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol bares Monday (Jan. 30, 2023) he will lead a team of Filipino experts for the rice self-sufficiency program of Papua New Guinea this year. Piñol said helping him in the project is Danilo Arcales Bolos of Tagpos Sta. Rosa, Nueva Ecija, a former overseas Filipino worker, holds the record for the highest rice yield at 17 metric tons per hectare. (PNA file photo)
DAVAO CITY – Former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol announced Monday that he will lead a team of Filipinos engaged to help the Papua New Guinea (PNG) government in its rice self-sufficiency program.
“It took six years before this program could come this far, with the PNG government inviting a group of Filipino agriculture experts to steer the 10-year rice sufficiency program covering 100,000 hectares,” Piñol said in an interview.
He said Papua New Guinea currently imports at least 400,000 metric tons of rice every year to feed a country of 10 million.
“I am leading the Philippine group and I will be traveling to PNG very often. For the timetable, we will launch the rice program in July 2023,” he said.
Piñol said helping him in the project is Danilo Arcales Bolos, of Tagpos Sta. Rosa, Nueva Ecija, a former overseas Filipino worker, who holds the record for highest rice yield at 17 metric tons per hectare.
“So today, the very simple formula which could have helped the Philippines achieve rice self-sufficiency will now be implemented in another country,” he said.
“While this may look like a vindication for me, I actually consider this development as historic both for Papua New Guinea and the Philippines,” he added.
As soon as the PNG achieves a level of Rice Sufficiency, excess production would be brought home to the Philippines and with an estimated 10-million hectares of vast plains with wide rivers, he said there is so much area to be planted to rice over the next 40 to 50 years.
In PNG, he said the political leaders are aggressive and determined to achieve rice self-sufficiency, letting the agriculture experts run the whole show.
Piñol said his engagement with PNG rice program started when former President Rodrigo Duterte, during a meeting with then PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill in Danang, Vietnam, instructed him to start an agricultural cooperation program with a country of 46.2 million hectares.
“The bigger credit for the start of this project should go to the current Prime Minister, James Marape, whom I befriended when I was Agriculture Secretary, and he was PNG's Finance Minister, who is determined to lift his people out of poverty by undertaking an ambitious food production program,” Piñol recalled. (PNA)
