Jagna wants to increase rice production, say the municipal authorities. The question is can this town be self sufficient in the staple? If we go by statistics, we can. There will never be rice shortage in Jagna on a good year. This information is based on the findings of several rice researches. According to statistics, an average Filipino consumes 0.379 kilograms of rice per day. That would be slightly over one third of a kilo. Or say 0.139 metric tons of rice per person per annum. Jagna has a population of 32,614 persons in the 2007 census. Let us say this is now 33,000 this year. This many persons would require 4,587 metric tons of rice per year. This means we have to produce this amount to be self sufficient. According to the municipal data base, we have 358 hectares of irrigated rice land and 324 rain fed. If we go by Nueva Ecija production records, in the year 2007, a relatively dry season, the town of Sto Domingo produced 10 metric tons of rice per hectare. In a wet season, they could improve production by 20 percent.

The 358 hectares could produce 3,580 metric tons. And even if the 324 rain fed fields can only produce 5 metric tons per annum, the total Jagna production would be 5,200 metric tons with approximately a month's buffer stock. Thus means according to computation Jagna could be able to produce enough for her in terms of rice. Climatically, we have an advantage over northern rice producing provinces. First, storms seldom hit us directly. Except in El Niño years, we have no definite dry season. The second is we do not have serious agrarian problems. There are no large haciendas, which hog productive lands. Since our lands are held by small farmers, they can give intensive attention to rice growing. Large rice growers just see to it that the paddies are well prepared since once the rice is transplanted the race between the rice plant and weeds will start. This means, these farmers are seen only during planting time and harvest. Perhaps once in a while they will inspect their fields to see that the paddies still has water. Since our paddies here are better cared, they will produce more.

The sad part of the bargain is that researches are good only in paper. Implementation is another story. It is unglamorous to get muddy. No matter how productive is the farmer, he is always in the lower scale of society. We prefer to be in office rather than in the field even if it pays us peanuts. Program after program had been introduced by the national government but there had been no takers. Jagna does not have to look far. We have our resources if we only know how to be aware of them and use them to our advantage. If we could only concentrate on R and D perhaps we will be more productive. There were development agendas shouted during the campaign. We wonder who wrote them.