DA Assures to Take Actions on El Niño – Related Cases

● The hot temperature which is now hounding the country is a big challenge to all farmers whose livelihood usually depend on farm animals and crops

The government’s agriculture office on Tuesday morning called the attention of all farmers in the region to immediately report any problems related to diseases on their farm animals, including crops, to any agriculture office in their area so that proper actions can be taken.

OIC Regional Technical Director Joel Elumba, of the Department of Agriculture (DA)–7 ‘s Research and Regulations office made this call as a measure to protect farmers from the El Niño effect. Elumba stressed that hot temperature which is now hounding the country is a big challenge to all farmers whose livelihood usually depends on their farm animals and crops.

The El Niño, according to PAGASA, would stay up to the first quarter of 2015 and could cause abnormalities to the physical conditions on all living and non living things especially when these are expose to the direct heat of the sun.

Elumba said that the people at DA are already instructed to widen their monitoring services on the effect of El Niño and be ready to give its proper solutions once they received problems which are related to it.

However, Elumba explained that being human, they also have limited power and knowledge but assured to exert their extra efforts to minimize El Niño’s hazardous effect to the people and their livelihood.

The DA OIC chief also identified diseases which are common to the animals during the hot weather condition such as cold and coughs. He said this diseases could affect cattle, pigs, chicken, dogs and other animals due to its exposure to the hot temperature.

He also reminded the public to avoid close contact to stray dogs, or even pet dogs. He said even if pet dogs are well taken cared of by their masters, they would still acquire rabies as an effect of the El Niño.

Elumba furher warned the people to take extra care given this abnormality of the weather condition to avoid its bad effect.

Authorities said the El Niño will move to high gear on the last week of this month when the southern monsoon takes effect.