Nothing but a pipe dream

Agriculture Secretary Domingo Panganiban, speaking as guest of the Manila Overseas Press Club recently, proudly declared that the Philippines will become self-sufficient in rice by 2009, or just a short three years from now.

Bold words indeed, considering that the boast entails dismantling, in three short years, an anomaly that several decades of neglect, wrong priorities and corruption have caused to become deeply entrenched in our system.

Yet, who would not be thrilled by the prospect of rice sufficiency? As a country of 87 million rice eaters, with three more mouths joining the food chain every minute, we could almost to a man drop to our knees in supplication if only we could be sufficient in this vital staple.

But as we said, we are victims of an anomalous situation. Neglect and wrong priorities are driving ever increasing segments of the population to urban centers where there are no farms to till, only exploding numbers of stomachs to fill.

Conversely, the same neglect and wrong priorities are driving investments farther into arable land, eating away precious tracts of rice producing farms for conversion into high yield real estate developments.

The Philippines is a country where about 80 percent of the population consider themselves to be poor. In turn, this huge chunk of the population spends about 80 percent of meager earnings on food, which invariably includes rice, being the staple.

In other words, the demand for rice is so great that it boggles the mind to imagine why a government has failed for so long a time to recognize the need to be self sufficient in this food staple.

Of course it is easy to blame neglect and wrong priorities. But there is another culprit that is just, if not more, responsible for the anomaly. And this culprit is corruption. Corruption makes the need for rice beg to be exploited.

Just as unscrupulous traders exploit the shortage of basic goods in the aftermath of tragedies such as storms, so will the corrupt out to make a quick buck exploit the tempting trade in rice.

But when we talk of trade in rice, we do not refer to the home-grown varieties. We refer to the huge rice importations that the country makes each year, year after year, in a perpetual cycle that has gone on, as we said, for decades.

Instead of keeping our precious dollars here, we spend them on huge purchases of rice we make from such countries as China, Vietnam, Thailand and India, countries that learned modern farming techniques and acquired high-yield varieties from us.

The Philippines is home to the International Rice Research Institute, one of the leading such centers in the world. Yet, while other rice-eating countries have reaped tremendous benefits from the institute, we ourselves have scarcely applied them for our own selves.

It is no wonder then that in terms of rice production, we lag far behind those countries that sent experts to study at the center. But as they say, there is a method to madness. And so it is that maybe, this is all according to some grand corrupt design.

Some people who have the means to influence the direction this country takes on anything could be purposely depriving the country of the means and the ability to make use of what other countries learn and derive from us.

Maybe it is by design that we should be forever insufficient in rice production. And maybe the reason to that is that there is a killing to be made each time the country imports rice to feed the hungry multitudes.

Sometime ago, a ship bearing tens of thousands of tons of imported rice was stolen right inside one of the country's busiest shipping lanes. Despite a massive land, sea and air search (kuno), the ship disappeared from the face of the earth. Rice sufficiency? Dream on.