NSO bares agricultural / fishery growth in years

By PIA Samar / NBQ
September 13, 2012

CATBALOGAN CITY, Samar  –  As the National Statistics Office (NSO) will soon be conducting the Census on Agriculture and Fishery (CAF), it then bared growth and decline of the sectors defined in ten years time.

During, Wednesday’s Provincial Consultative Forum on the conduct of the CAF, it bared important data from the census records.

From the year 1991 the number of farms increased from 4.6 million farms to 4.8 million farms in 2002, an increase of 4.3%, however, a decline of 3.0% was noted in the average farm size from 2.2 hectares to 2.0.

Central Visayas accounted for the highest number of farms, with 430 thousand farms covering 522.4 thousand hectares. Bicol Region meanwhile, had the biggest farm area with 892 thousand hectares.

In Eastern Visayas, records show that in 1991, it had 321,456 hectares of farms and increased in 2002 to 330,750.

The 2002 CAF also maintained that palay and corn are still the top two major temporary crops in the country, with palay accounting for 2.2 million farms with an area of 3.9 million hectares.

Corn, considered as the second major crop, has 1.5 million farms covering some 2.4 million hectares.

As to major permanent crop, the coconut topped them all with some 53.9 percent devoted to coconut plantation accounting to 2.6 million farms planted with some 320 million coco trees.

The coconut is followed closely by banana with 2.3 million farms planted with 168.9 million bananas.

As to livestock, the number of hogs increased by 14.6 percent from 7.58 million heads in 1991 to 8.6 million heads in 2002. Carabaos also increased from 2.7 M heads in 1991 to 2.8 M heads in 2002.

In poultry, a remarkable increase was observed, from 87.30 million chickens in 1991 to 126.7 million chickens in 2002 or an increase of 68.9 percent.

As to the gender of farmers, more males with 88.2 percent were engaged in agricultural operation than females.

In fisheries, the number of both municipal and commercial fishing operators significantly increased, while the number of boats weighing 3 gross tons or less and rafts doubled.

Aquaculture also recorded a dramatic increase in the number of operators from 27.3 thousand to 220.5 thousand or an eightfold increase.

Finally, as to the number of household members involved in farming, fishing and aquaculture, the CAF revealed that roughly 5.5 million household members were engaged in agricultural activities, 4.95 thousand household members were engaged in commercial fishing, while 177.6 thousand household members were engaged in aqua-farming operations.