Is it the answer to our food security problem?

MANILA, Philippines –  The quest for food security has been a long and continuing struggle for us Filipinos. Briefly in our history we were self-sufficient in rice in six out of 110 years. But mostly, achieving self-sufficiency in our most basic staple has been a frustrating and desperate failure. The reason is not rice productivity per se but lack of water for irrigation.

What to do? What is the answer to this most basic and pressing dilemma? There may be an answer to our long and continuing quest.

I might have glimpsed the answer at the National Corn Congress early last month in Isabela which, coincidentally, is the country’s largest corn producer. At Reina Mercedes stands the biggest corn post harvest facility ever built in the Philippines. President Aquino and Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala came to inaugurate it.   

This facility is a $20-million investment by the Mindanao Grains Processing Corp., the largest investment made so far in the corn industry. It can store 75,000 tons of corn in its 12 5,000-ton silos and related storage facilities.

Of the many participating booths at the corn congress, the one that attracted me most was the one sponsored by the University of the Philippines (Los Banos) Institute of Plant Breeding or IPB.

IPB has developed what is being touted as possibly the commodity that can provide the breakthrough in the country’s quest for food security: self-sufficiency in a staple that can complement, but not replace, rice as the Filipino’s everyday staple.

And this is called Quality Protein Maize, or QPM. It is a variety of white corn that is high in protein and, most importantly, tastes like rice. It can complement rice when processed into grits.

QPM has many other qualities or features: it has more protein and fiber than rice. And it contains more minerals and higher amylase, the latter meaning having a low glycemic index (GI) that is beneficial for diabetics. Low GI also has the additional attribute of delaying hunger pangs.

Dr. Wilma Hurtada of UPLB/IPB asked me to taste the mixed sample: mixture of three parts rice and one part maize. It tasted quite good. QPM, once bred in commercial quantities, can contribute to the country’s long-time problem of lack of food security. When I was a student in UP Diliman, the biggest cafeteria in Vinzons Hall served rice mixed with whit corn grits as well.

Can QPM then be the Holy Grail of food security for the Philippines? It can be. Indeed, it may be what we’ve been searching for such a long time.

First, corn is a dryland crop consumes much less water than palay, an aquatic plant. While a palay crop consumes up to five cubic meters of water for one kilo of rice, corn probably needs at best a fifth of it. We will not need as much resources for food security such as for new irrigation development. We can develop other food crops for diversification.

Water is a scarce commodity in this country, even without factoring in climate change. We don’t have cheap water for irrigation unlike Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam which are drained by huge rivers. Cambodia and Vietnam have the Mekong while Thailand has the Chaophraya River. No wonder Thailand has 10 million hectares of harvested rice lands and Vietnam has 7.5 million compared to our 4.6 million. The secret is water… cheap, abundant water.

Second, corn is more nutritious than rice. The level of malnutrition in this country is very high. For building our human capital, this is strategic. It is also cheaper price-wise as compared to rice, according to Dr. Hurtada. Corn can be grown in the uplands, too where rural poverty is rampant.

Third, the savings in foreign exchange will be huge if one fourth of the rice requirement is substituted by corn. We will be supporting local farmers, not the foreign farmers. With say 12 million tons of rice demand, corn can substitute three million tons! No more rice imports. The countryside will be energized by corn trade valued up to P50 billion before counting even the multipliers.

Is this doable in the long run? It is, provided three things can happen.

First, the Filipinos must have the patriotism; that eating a rice-corn mix will save the country some $1.5 billion in imports annually and will help alleviate poverty in the countryside. Second, the parts of irrigated rice areas are planted with corn in the dry season when water is scarce.

Third, the government launches an education and information campaign on the multiple benefits (i.e. health and water conservation) of eating rice-corn mix rather than purely rice.

Will our leaders take up the challenge? We need to craft the policies now to respond to the impending water crisis. If not, our food security will be endlessly under threat.

To jumpstart, let us try to implement what our state university scientists developed!!