The Kalinga province is emerging to become Luzon's hybrid rice capital as majority of farmers with a total of 16,000 hectares of irrigated land have so far shifted to hybrid rice from certified or inbred varieties while Kalinga's thriving hybrid seed growing industry is seen to turn the tide toward the entire Philippines' increased rice productivity.

Lawyer Cipriano Santiago, Department of Agriculture (DA) rice program coordinator in the Cordillera Region, said that compared to Region 2's known rice granaries Isabela and Cagayan, Kalinga is coming out as Cordillera's top hybrid rice producer even if government initially prioritized introducing hybrid rice to the other provinces.

He said farmers have achieved a hybrid rice yield of eight to 12 metric tons (MT) per hectare compared to certified seed's four to five MT per hectare. Having come out as a top hybrid rice seed grower too, farmers there have been able to achieve a yield of 800 to as much as 1,500 kilos of seeds per hectare while farmers growing seeds have ballooned to 500 persons from just a few when the technology was introduced in 2001 as farmers saw the lucrative prospects of growing hybrid seeds.

"We have been influenced by Region 2 because of our proximity to it. But our seeds here is of high quality. Last year, we only had 112 hectares (planted for seed growing). Now it's at 837 hectares because people see the quality of our seeds. That's why Visayas and Mindanao want to get seeds from us," he said.

Kalinga Vice Governor Joseph T. Delson told reporters Kalinga has all the potential to become Luzon's hybrid rice capital.

"Kalinga was once the rice granary of Central Luzon, and we are looking at bringing back this record of Kalinga in history," he said.

Aside from the fine weather which is more temperate with eight to 10 hours of sunlight compared to Isabela or Cagayan's longer 12 hours sunlight that dry crop, Kalinga authorities attribute the province's knack at planting hybrid rice to a hardworking labor.

"Labor is a big part here. Our people here are very meticulous. They already leveled the soil, they will level it again. They work hard at removing the off-types (non-hybrid mixed with the plants)," said Felix G. Dacalan, provincial agriculturist.

Kalinga also has good irrigation coming from the Chico Dam in Mt. Province, although the water level could become critical during the dry season. The seeds in Kalinga are brought to Isabela and stored there.

Santiago, who claims Kalinga accounts for 80 percent of the Cordillera region's rice production, said the province is targeting to plant hybrid rice on 7,600 hectares for the coming wet season (May to October 2004) and 13,000 hectares for the next dry season (November 2004 to April 2005).

While it failed to reach its 9,500-hectare target for the last dry season (planting only reached 5,700 hectares) due to the shortage of seeds, Santiago said this problem will not recur in the next dry season since Kalinga has planted enough seeds to even enable it to sell seeds to other provinces.