According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), over 50 percent of the world population depends on rice for about 80 percent of its food requirements. Over 90 percent of the world’s rice is produced and consumed in the Asia-Pacific Region.
Rice is a food staple for more than 3.5 billion people around the world, particularly in Asia, Latin America, and parts of Africa.
Rice may be the world’s most important crop, but The Economist points out, it is fueling diabetes and climate change, and the demand for rice is expected to soar due to population growth. The world will need to produce almost a third more rice by 2050. That looks increasingly hard – and in some ways undesirable, The Economist observed.
“Rice production is sputtering. Yields have increased by less than one percent a year over the past decade, much less than in the previous one. The greatest slowdowns were in Southeast Asia, where Indonesia and the Philippines – together, home to 400 milion people – are already big importers. This has many explanations. Urbanization and industrialization have made labor and farmland scarcer. Excessive use of pesticides, fertilizer, and irrigation have poisoned and depleted soils and groundwater. But the biggest reason may be global warming.”
The Economist is saying that rice is not sustainable in the long term in an era of climate change.
“It gets worse. Rice is not merely a casualty of climate change, but also a contributor to it. By starving soils of oxygen, paddy cultivation encourages methane-emitting bacteria. It is a bigger source of greenhouse gas than any foodstuff except beef. Its emissions footprint is similar to that of aviation. If you count the conversion of forestland for rice paddy – the fate of much of Madagascar’s rainforest – that footprint is even bigger.”
Besides, The Economist warns “Eating too much rice turns out to be bad for people, as well as the climate. In South Asia, rice-heavy diets have been linked to high rates of diabetes and persistent malnutrition.”
“Governments need to nudge producers and consumers away from rice… Scrapping subsidies that favor rice over other crops would make such efforts more effective,” The Economist urged.
For us, we have more immediate problems than the impact of rice on climate change. We do not produce enough rice for our growing population. We are dependent on imported rice for our shortfall.
Problem is, rice is no longer as easily available in the international market as before. Last year, India banned rice exports to shore up domestic supply. Significant increases in prices also deter rice traders from importing enough to cover our needs.
As of January 1, the Philippine Statistical Authority (PSA) estimated total rice stocks inventory at 1.77 million metric tons. That’s a decline from the previous month’s record of 2.53 million metric tons.
But the Department of Agriculture reports our rice production has remained high even if our farmers used less fertilizer than required due to a sharp increase in price.
The DA’s 2022 rice supply and demand outlook as of Sept. 15, 2022 showed that the total annual supply is at 17.364 MMT, while the total annual usage is at 15.137 MMT. There will be an ending stock of 2.228 MMT equivalent to 60 days. The expected import arrival is at 2.751 MMT for the first three quarters of this year.
Still, the DA is now warning consumers that the retail price of rice is expected to rise this year due to lower import volume. DA deputy spokesperson Rex Estoperez said in a briefing last week that the DA is trying to find out why rice inventories have fallen despite substantial imports last year. “Nagtataka rin kami because we had imports of 3.8 million metric tons last year. What happened to those stocks.”
The National Food Authority (NFA) is responsible for maintaining an emergency rice buffer stock, sourced from domestic farmers. Stocks in the NFA, however, plummeted by 44.8 percent to 114,910 MT.
There must be a miscalculation in the PSA data, former DA Usec Fermin Adriano commented in our Viber chat group. “We imported almost four million metric tons last year. The news report says that we imported almost 664,000 MTs as of March 2023. Our palay (unhusked rice) production did not witness a dramatic decline last year. Our rice imports average annually at more than two million MTs.”
Leonardo Montemayor, who represents a farmers group also has some questions. He pointed out that as of January this year, NFA buffer stocks (reserved for calamities and other public emergencies) were down to just three days of national rice consumption. NFA is unable to purchase palay, because its buying price of P19/kilo cannot compete with the current P22 to P24 per kilo price of private traders. How much inventory will NFA have when we enter the lean/typhoon-prone months starting this July?
“How can the DA, NFA, and PSA explain the country having only 47 days of rice supply (three days held by NFA, 15.5 days by the commercial sector and 28.5 days by farm households)? In 2022, total rice imports reached 3.8 million metric tons - the largest quantity since the Rice Tariffication Law took effect in 2019. To what extent did local palay/rice production actually drop last year? Are some traders manipulating the release of imported rice to maximize their gains from rising rice prices?
“With the looming El Niño and the private sector’s reluctance to import more rice (which have become more expensive abroad), how will the Executive address the problems of NFA’s zero or near zero rice inventory, deficiency in locally produced rice, and the rising retail prices of the commodity?”
I heard one comment that the problem with our President is that everybody seems to be running the country today except him. True. He has been pretty laid back as a president, given the gravity of our problems.
But a rice shortage is more politically dangerous than the sugar shortage. He should call a meeting of all his agriculture experts and craft a good rice strategy before he goes to London to visit the King on his coronation. He should meet the traders too because without them, there is little he can do now.
Boo Chanco’s email address is bchanco@gmail.com. Follow him in Twitter @boochanco