Dry fields and dry throats

El Niño is now exacting a heavy toll in Luzon and some parts in the Visayas. In that northern sector of the country, the water level of dams is already way below the normal mark. If no rain comes in the next few weeks, the functionality of these reservoirs would be compromised. Power generation would be a problem. Worse, rice fields would not be getting enough water for irrigation. Already one can see footages of dried up fields, an alarming sight really because without irrigation how can rice be grown?

How extensive is this phenomenon? Very extensive: From Ilocos to Cagayan Valley down to Pangasinan, and Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Bulacan and Camarines Sur covering major rice producing areas, crops could not be raised for dearth of water. Some fields which were planted last month have been site of stunted crops, if not dying ones, and losses have been estimated to reach hundreds of millions of pesos. In fact, the Department of Agriculture has warned that if the situation worsens massive importation of rice would be our only recourse.

Rice importation is not a new thing. Even sans flood and drought, the country has always been buying rice from abroad at the rate of one million metric tons a year. What a waste of dollars! But there's no other way this basic stuff in the Filipino's diet can be procured despite the tens of thousand hectares available for rice culture. The outcome: A snail-paced economic development. Depressing? But this has been the way things are insofar as rice production is concerned. For some reasons, the country's leadership past and present has not completely zeroed in its concern to solve this predicament once and for all.

That concern includes a turn around from the policy that encourages the planting of cash crops (sugar, coffee, coconut, and recently, fuel-related crops) for export purposes to the down-grading of rice production. It also includes construction of extensive irrigation facilities to constantly water-feed farms especially during dry months. Construction too of farm-to-market roads is a serious concern because without this rice trading would be hampered.

More important funds for agricultural purposes should be judiciously used and fertilizer scams should never happen again.

What will it take to make the country's leadership wake up and do something to ensure food security? With flood and drought, this is certain to be a rice crisis. But the administration seems to take the whole affair at a stride. Perhaps, because it has only a few months left, the thinking seems to be, leave it to the next guy!

But what will prod that guy to take this bull of a problem by its horn?

So far not one of the presidentiables has told the electorates of what he will do to solve this problem. So far, they are at each other's throat trying to gain electoral mileage. The fields are parched and are cracking up. Famine is threatening our rural folks. Are these presidential hopefuls not alarmed?

     Are they not alarmed that there are "pila" in Metro Manila as people fetch water from communal sources? There are talks of water rationing too, which is an inevitable happening if the heat phenomenon does not ease up. What would be the scenario if tens of thousands do not get enough water for their daily needs? A massive social disturbance is not an unlikely event.

And the current government would hear the brunt of it. The thing is, people cannot understand why the current leadership has not been proactive enough in dealing with this problem. In the past, the country has had experienced a serious lack of rainfall. There was drought in 1983 and in 1997 when crops withered and portable water became scarce. Yet no significant steps have been taken to minimize the impact of this climactic threat.

For instance, had there been extensive irrigation facilities equipped with thousands of deep-well pumps, rain failure would not be much of a problem. Had water catchments been built in strategic sites in farm areas, water supply during lean months would not have been a source of anxiety. As it is irrigated fields are limited in number and thousands of hectares for rice cultivation depend only on rain water. As for deep-well pumps, the number could also be limited, otherwise there would have been no waterless fields.

Dry fields, dry throats, seem to be the threat these days. Where lies our hope for help?

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