 Hi, welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the Republic of the Philippines, His Excellency Benigno S. Aquino III. Dakumagasay ninyong dahat. Good morning. Welcome, Mr. President to the International Rice Research Institute and thank you for accepting our invitation. We are very pleased that you decided to visit Erie during the Philippine National Year of Rice. We have a number of major roles. We house the world's largest collection of genetic resources on rice which we will visit later. We do basic and applied rice science about 50-60% is related to crop improvement so the breeding of new rice varieties and the other half roughly is all aspects of crop management, grain quality mechanization, post harvest technologies, environment climate change, social sciences and information. At it comes to the hills of our economies amazing achievements in 2012, particularly the agricultural sector. Last year the harvest of over 18 million metric tons of pala and over 7 million metric tons of corn are the highest levels we have ever attained. Pala productions growth from 6% in 2011 to 8% in 2012. It is the highest rate of growth since the year 2000. These were primarily achieved through policy shifts. First, from input subsidies to investment in strategic agriculture infrastructure and secondly, from rice import dependence to local procurement and food staple sufficiency. With our renewed cooperation with Erie on various areas of rice research and with the continued support of our dear president, we and the Department of Agriculture look forward to achieving even more rice yields to the point of self sufficiency in the food staple by the end of 2013. Climate change is a major challenge, temperature, rainfall, flooding and weather hazards. And as Akim said, we need climate proof rice. So here comes the food staple sufficiency program led by Secretary Alkala. And in this we have started the collaboration, continuing the collaboration that has started over the last 40, 50 years. First is President Marcos was our country's ruler. We had the program called Pasagana 99. The aim was 100 cabans per hectare. We never achieved it because today it's 80. Four tons per slice to 80 cabans. We never achieved 99. So it's still a goal after 40 years. Then the other aspect because when we were in when I was at BBSP, there was a question, not to take away anything from the research that has been done and the achievements that I received as done, but they were asking farmers who have adopted the methods at that point in time in the late 80s wound up with planting systems that required tremendous inputs that the end result was the netting of the farmer did not actually increase. And there was a top forest informed suggestions that perhaps the additional methods that were less input intensive would rebound to greater profitability for the farmers. May I just ask if there is also research being done as to how to melt and perhaps the two conflicting viewpoints? Yeah, I think the input costs are a big concern for any farmer in the world. And the issue is not less input. The issue is higher input efficiency, essentially. When we look at rice in particular, for example, and take nitrogen fertilizer, which is one of the expensive inputs, the average efficiency that a farmer currently achieves is 30 to 40 percent. So the rest is lost. We know that with good management practices you can already increase this efficiency to 50 percent if not 60 percent. Which means you can get the same yield with less fertilizer or more yield with the same amount of fertilizer. The problem has been that and you can make the same calculation for other things like water and the pumping cost and many other things. It is really a matter of being able to implement those things in not just a few research plots or 100 demonstration plots. It's basically how do you bring this to a million farmers. And there some countries have made more progress than others. And there needs to be a good extension system, but there needs to be also an incentive for farmers to do that. If it's not worth it, if the gain is too small then the incentive is not there. But this is where the gaps are in terms of profitability. So through more efficient use of inputs actually save production costs where possible, but also in particular increase the yield. Because increasing yield typically has much higher influence on your profit than saving a little bit of the input costs. So but coming back to Masakana 99 challenge I think the 100 car ones is an absolutely realistic goal for this country on average. Of course we know that for many trials and we also know that many good farmers achieve those kind of yields and even more. So climatically in terms of the soils in terms of the available resources it is possible. The 99 is of course the average across irrigated and non-irrigated. Across other growing environments across types of varieties across different ways of taking care of the plant. So indeed the challenge of meeting the 99 started in the Marcos days with about 40-45. And now many farmers far exceed that of course. At Jim Bank ay inabot po ng cantito level dito po ang nag- dito po nilagay ang gulayans. Meron po ka Meron po ang yung po ay sa area meron po sa boong area meron po rin dedicated ako.