SAN FERNANDO CITY. Around 76,000 hectares of the more than 301,000 hectares of rice land in the Ilocos region have not been planted due to scanty rainfall at this time of the year.

Edmund Quiniz, regional rice coordinator and chief agriculturist of the Department of Agriculture in Region 1, said most of these unplanted agri lands are located in Pangasinan, La Union and Ilocos Sur.

However, about 1,000 hectares in Ilocos Norte are also not yet planted due to dry spell.

All those unplanted are rain-fed areas or rice lands that depend on water from the rains, said Quiniz.

Farmers tilling the affected areas are worried because if rains will not come sooner, their rice seedlings could not be transplanted in paddies on time.

These rice seedlings are now one and a half month old and would be useless soon if the rains will not come.

Quiniz admitted that cloud seeding operation in the region seemed not enough.

He however assured that even if Luzon is affected by the long dry spell, rice supply would remain stable as other rice-producing provinces in the Visayas and Mindanao can offset the rice losses in Luzon.

He foresees bumper rice harvests in Visayas and Mindanao due to good weather there.