.jpg) |
| Stock photo. Source unknown. |
Yellow corn impacts on livestock
big time
LOS
BAÑOS, Laguna –White
corn is the second most important food crop consumed by at least 12 million
Filipinos who prefer it to rice.
But
yellow corn makes up the 70 percent of the corn that goes into feeds for hogs,
broilers and layers.
Indeed,
the competitiveness of the livestock industry depends on the price of yellow
corn, said Dr. Ramon L. Clarete, Professor at the University of the Philippines
School of Economics, in his Professorial Chair Lecture at the Southeast Asian
Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA).
And
that is not one to be glossed over: corn and livestock contribute about 16
percent of the gross value added of agriculture.
Corn
farms take up a quarter of the country’s 4.858 million hectares of arable
lands.
While
the land area is about the same for yellow (1.294 million hectares) and white
corn (1.367 million hectares) more farmers are planting yellow than white corn.
Yellow
corn output is now two-thirds of corn production, up from 54 percent in the
1990s. It is grown in Mindanao, Visayas and Luzon, in that order.
In
2011, of the 6,971,221 tons of corn produced, 4,820,999 tons were yellow corn,
or 69 percent of production.
Nearly
70 percent was harvested in just four regions: Cagayan Valley (22.98 percent,
the largest concentration of yellow corn); Northern Mindanao (17.39 percent),
SOCSKSARGEN (South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani and General Santos City
at 16.79 percent) and the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (11.43 percent).
Nearly
700 registered feed mills use 70 percent of the corn produced; a little over
300 are “home mixers” or backyard livestock farms, mostly in Batangas, that mix
their own feeds.
Luzon,
while it may need additional corn from Mindanao, is self-sufficient with the
largest concentration of corn farms in Isabela and near the major livestock
farms located in Bulacan and Batangas. The Visayas is deficit in yellow corn
feed which it gets mostly from Mindanao that has the largest surplus.
The
country has been a net importer of yellow corn for feeds. Because of the
increasing use in the United States of corn-based bioethanol for energy, the
Philippines can no longer buy corn from there. Another potential source is
Southeast Asia but it may yet take some time to be fully developed.
One
alternative is feed wheat but it is not yellow, with undesirable impact on the
meat and eggs produced. Feed wheat can substitute 100 percent for corn in hog
feeds and 90 percent in broiler and layer feeds.
Most
corn produced by farmers are sold as grains. Five years ago, procurement of
corn on the cob was started by corn processing centers.
Sent to Scruffed via sciencenewsphilippines@gmail.com