THE Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said that the country’s agricultural output saw a good rebound in 2023 after contracting for the past three years, but still below the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) target, data released by the government on Tuesday showed.

Data from the PSA revealed that the value of production in agriculture and fisheries grew by 0.7% in the last three months of 2023.

This is due to the higher production of crops, livestock, and poultry.
 

Meanwhile, the value of crop production rose by 0.1%, with palay production up by 0.1%. 

The biggest increases were recorded in the production of mango up 11.4%, calamansi by 4.0%, pineapple by 3.8%, onion by 3.4%, and ampalaya by 3.2%.
 

On the other hand the livestock production also expanded by 2.7%, as hog production went up by 3.7%, goat production by 1.3%, and dairy production by 17.2%. Declines were reported in the production of cattle and carabao.
 

The poultry production also recorded an increase in the value of production at 7.8%, as all commodities posted growth —chicken by 8.1%, chicken eggs by 7.8%, duck by 0.6%, and duck eggs by 0.3%.
 

Fisheries meanwhile saw a contraction, as its value of production fell by 5.2%.

“Our goal is to push that rice harvest volume further but that could be a challenge this year because of water shortage we expect due to El Niño,” Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said in a separate statement.