HARD to believe, but the International Rice Research Institute said yesterday that Filipino rice farmers are more productive than their Thai counterparts, even if Thailand is the world’s largest rice-exporting country.

Dr. Robert Zeigler, IRRI director general, said Filipino farmers are more productive per hectare than Thai farmers "and this is not simply political talk from an international guest."

The Philippines has been hosting the IRRI since the 1960s.

An IRRI statement said Filipino rice farmers are "already almost a ton a hectare more productive than Thai rice farmers."

It also said Filipino farmers generally use less pesticides than other Southeast Asian farmers.

Plus, it said that the Filipinos’ "texting" prowess or "use of mobile phone technology" gives them more access to rice farming information than their Asean counterparts.

IRRI said with a target of 5 tons per hectare, Filipino rice farmers should become the most productive in Southeast Asia, ahead of both Vietnam and Indonesia.

"And Thailand doesn’t even have to deal with typhoons," Zeigler said. The Philippines gets around 20 typhoons a year.

IRRI said other geographical challenges that the Philippines faces include its being an archipelago, not a land mass like Thailand. And it has no major river deltas.

Thailand, along with Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and China’s Yunnan province, is irrigated by the 4,350-kilometer Mekong river, the 12th longest river in the world and the 7th longest in Asia.

IRRI said the Philippines’ being an Asian leader in the use of science and technology in agriculture will soon make its farmers benefit from flood-tolerant rice.

President Arroyo, in a visit to IRRI in Los Baños, Laguna, checked out the new "climate-ready" rice varieties that are tolerant to heat, submerging, and salinity. These will survive the effects of climate change and would have higher yields.

IRRI’s background paper on the rice crisis stated the following reasons for the rice shortage: more consumption than actual production; declining annual growth yield, which has been "almost nil" in the major rice-growers in Asia in the past six years; little room for expansion for rice areas due to population increase; reduced public investment in agricultural research and development; rising demand for rice in Africa, whose imports accounted for almost a third of the total world trade in rice; economic growth in large countries like India and China; deteriorated irrigation systems; rising oil prices; extreme weather; and reoccurring pest outbreaks such as plant hoppers.

Cagayan de Oro Archbishop Antonio Ledesma said the country has all the resources to stop its dependence on rice imports.

"We have shown that (self-sufficiency) in the past. Nanggagaling nga rito sa atin ang teknolohiya sa pagpo-produce ng rice through research institute natin, so I think it’s really a matter of strategic planning," said Ledesma, chair of the National Rural Congress of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.

He said one of the most basic requirements for self-sufficiency is giving incentives to the agriculture sector.

"Hindi sila nabibigyan ng motivation at yun nga ang dahilan ng mga small farmers… they can’t really produce more. Wala din silang incentives. Wala rin mga support services na dapat ibibigay ng gobyerno at mga government agencies," he said.