It's dry season harvest, the most promising in the year's two rice seasons, and farmers in Moncada, Tarlad can't held but rejoice over a harvest that brought net income of about P60, 000 per hectare.

This harvest is even more memorable for the Moncada farmers as it is their fisrt try at growing hybrid seed SL-8H since government adopted in 2001 a 300,000-hectare hybrid rice program.

Moncada is apparently not in government's priority for the program compared to top rice towns in Isabela or Nueva Ecija. Its drawback is a long history of submersion in water, about 10 feet deep in the rainy season.

"We have been (Central Luzon's) catchbasin since time immemorial. There's no way you can solve it, but there's a plan for desilting so water will flow faster to Lingayen Gulf," said Moncada Mayor Estelita Aquino.

With deep flood, it is only in the dry season, whose planting begins in November, that rice here can be planted. Yet, even beyond November, farmers have to wait until water is low enough before transplanting rice. And when the dry planting months are up, irrigation becomes another problem.

Thomas Gimenez, vice president of Moncada hybrid seed supplier SL Agritech Corp., said this hybrid rice variety has proven to yield high in good conditions, but even the adverse condition in Moncada did not become a barrier to SL-8H's highyielding "hybrid vigor."

"They used a very old sedling. Farmers should transplant seedling 18 to 24 days (from broadcast). But farmers here were able to plant their seedling after 33 days as they waited for floods to subside. The old seedling reduces tillering capability. But yield was still high," Gimenez said.

Amid all the hindrances, Joven Quinto, 37, is proud that out of a six-hectare land he tills, his harvest on the first hectare gave him a yield of 162.2 cavans per hectare (8.1 metric tons), up by 47.42 percent from his former yield of 5.5 MT using certified seeds.

The shift was worth it as Quinto's net income soared to P70,151 for one hectare at the good-quality rice's selling price of P16.6 per kilo when his net income before was just at P20,600.

What has been further boosting Moncada farmers' net income was the shift to organic from chemical fertilizers whose price, urea in particular, rose to P950 per bag from year-ago's P500.

From his previous P72, 746 per hectare production cost, Quinto's production cost dropped by four percent to P70,000 which already includes five liters of P400 each, a payment of 25 cavans to the landowner, and 12 cavans each to two farmlands.

From 14 to 15 bags of fertilizer, Quinto turned to using five bags of organic fertilizer (decomposed rice leaves, chicken and hog manure) costing only P200 per bag, just two bags of urea, and three bags of 1620 at P670 each.

At his yield of 8.1 MT for one hectare, Quinto even regrets having failed to use any insecticide that would have raised yield to use any insecticide that would have raised yield to as much as 10MT.

As he plans to lease more land for his expansion, he pledges to plant hybrid rice on closer distance, 15x15 centimeter (CM) per hill from his previous 15x20 CM which is almost sure to yield him 10 MT.

With hybrid's profit, Aquino said its municipal government will expand hybrid rice over much of Moncada's 2,000-hectare rice area. Aside form extending subsidy for five bags of organic fertilizer per hectare, the municipal government lent farmers cash at a minimal one percent per month for their other inputs.

But Quinto said the government's lending fund is not enough. Farmers hope government will lend them diesel to pump irrigation which costs them P11, 044 per hectare.

"We dad to borrow more money from other lenders whose interest rate is very high," he said. (MMA)