Rice, rice!

On top of the government’s denial that a rice shortage exists DA secretary Arthur Yap recently advised restaurants and eateries to cut by one-half cup the amount of rice served to customers. In issuing this advise, Yap was reportedly thinking of DA’s statistics to the effect that some 25, 000 sacks of rice are being wasted every day in this country. To recall, about the same statistics was issued by the Agriculture Department during the incumbency of President Estrada as a result of which there was a campaign against rice wastage. In fact, one sidelight of such campaign was a comic strip titled “Asyong Aksaya” which regularly took a dig on the government’s rice conservation measure.

Asyong was portrayed as a scratch-and-dig guy like most urban poor and his funny escapades as he tried to minimize his intake of this staple diet tickled a lot of readers.

Many are tickled too by Secretary Yap’s advice, especially the average worker, but not out of fun but out of spite. And they have reasons to. Workers need a lot of energy, so they normally consume more carbohydrates than, say, office personnel. Besides, their limited income prevents them from having a regular serving of meat or even fish, thus they stuff themselves mostly with rice or (in Cebu) corn grits. How could they get along with less rice for meals?

Perhaps, the regular customers of restaurants who are usually employed, may accept a limited serving of rice, but how many of the mainstream Filipinos can afford to dine often in restaurants?

Anyway, the good Secretary’s remark was an offshoot of the ongoing rice debate in the country. One area of contention is whether or not there is a shortage of rice. There is, declared the National Rice Farmers Council. There’s none said the government. What’s the real score?

Per DA report, Filipinos consume roughly 13.1 million tons of rice annually, a great bulk of which is produced locally. But in the last few years production has slowed down, thus the country has to import about 2.2 million tons yearly to cover the shortfall. Why can’t the country produce enough rice to feed its people? This is ironical, social scientists have commented, because right in Los Baños, Laguna, the International Rice Research Institute has been turning out local and foreign farm experts in the past decades. In fact, rice technicians in our neighboring countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma have been trained in this institute and these countries are now the world’s leading exporters of rice. But the Philippines? It’s the other way around for us: We have become one of the world’s leading importers of rice!

Where are the Filipino scientists who trained at IRRI? Most of them are abroad, helping foreign farmers grow more rice for shipment to this country! What height of irony!

To go back to the question of whether there is a shortage of rice, NFA authorities are positive there’s none. However, they accept the fact that the price of rice has considerably risen, which means a crisis exists. To explain this they cite the following factors: Low volume of importation, increase in the price of fertilizers and fuel, dilapidated irrigation system, agricultural transformation, and import restriction in India, Thailand, and Vietnam. These factors taken together are responsible for the prevailing low supply of rice in the country, a reality DA and NFA refuse to acknowledge. But go to any NFA outlets in this city and you will find a long queue of people trying to buy rice at a controlled volume of 3 kilos per person. If there is no shortage, why the limited amount per consumer?

The factor about low volume of importation, DA says, is caused by rising demand of this staple commodity in the Middle East and Africa as well as in newly industrialized India and China. Add to this is the high cost of fuel and fertilizer, and as usual, corruption and you have a crisis situation which if uncontrolled could explode on the face of the Arroyo administration as a social volcano.

The truth is, corruption has been the primary cause of our bungled rice program, corruption not just of the current leadership but of those in the last decade or two. From policy formulation to implementation, from production to post-harvest activities to distribution, marketing and importation, the reign of greed in the Filipino leadership has prevailed. Remember the fertilizer scam, rice smuggling and irrigation fiasco?

Now we are about to reap the bitter fruit of that greed. Now the wolf of hunger waits in many a home.

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