The pest is scaling faster than the budget

PHP 35 million for twenty-five thousand hectares. Work it out, and the Department of Agriculture and the Sugar Regulatory Administration are spending PHP 1,400 per hectare against the red-striped soft scale insect. Expand the drone program to 45,000 hectares, as the agency says it is preparing to do, and unless new money is added, the figure falls to about PHP 780.

Start with the part that counters the argument. Geron Magbanua of the Provincial Agriculture Office has said RSSI produces more than 300 eggs per life cycle. The published count is lower. Guerrero and colleagues at the National Crop Protection Center in UP Los Baños, in a paper out this year, recorded about 197 eggs per female over a 63-day life. The province is reaching its scariest number yet. Say so, and move on, because 197 is still 197.

What are we up against? Negros reported 76,607 infested hectares as of June 21, a figure worth holding loosely, since only 13,797 of those had been validated. Iloilo’s 7,021 hectares add to that, bringing the total to a national program sized for 25,000. Negros Occidental alone reported 61,242. The queue is longer than the fund, and Iloilo is not near the front.

Then there is the other end of the squeeze: policy. Sugar Order No. 8 authorized 424,000 metric tons of imports against an industry recommendation of 150,000. Millgate prices fell from PHP 2,500 to PHP 2,800 per 50-kilogram bag, down to PHP 2,000 to PHP 2,200. Negros Occidental Rep. Javi Benitez put the sector’s October-to-December losses at PHP 7.28 billion in a March 19 privilege speech. Now the pest takes the tonnage. And a shortfall (the SRA has warned of 150,000 metric tons nationally) becomes the argument for the next import order. The planter loses on price, then on yield, then again on the remedy.

The containment plan has a hole. The province will regulate the movement of sugarcane planting materials using a cane zoning map. But Pulvinaria tenuivalvata also feeds on maize, rice, sorghum, and roadside grasses, according to that same UPLB paper. Batad sits at 68%, the worst rate in the province, in a municipality that has been converting land to corn for years. A cordon drawn around cane is a cordon with gaping holes.

So the ask is narrow and can be answered soon. How many pesos has the province committed, from which line item, and how many of the 7,021 hectares does that actually reach? The honest version costs something. A supplemental appropriation means the Sangguniang Panlalawigan takes money from a road, a drainage project, or the calamity fund it may want in October. And any farm graded severe or extreme needs compensation attached to the grade. Grade a man’s field Red, restrict his planting materials, pay him nothing, and he will stop reporting. That is not a prediction. That is what happened with the hogs, which is the comparison the governor made himself.