When President Noynoy Aquino delivered his first State of the Nation Address, among the most dramatic highlights of his speech was the disclosure that the country was virtually drowning in an oversupply of rice.
So huge was the oversupply that large parts of the stock were actually rotting, or so the president said at the time. As if on cue, many of his underlings chimed in, reporting terrifying scenes of valuable rice wasting away.
The obvious drift, of course, was to accuse the previous administration of importing more rice than the country needs, the implication being that there probably was money to be made from the imports.
To the open-minded, however, importing more rice than needed makes perfect sense to a country that relies on imports to feed its people. The Philippines cannot afford to have rice run out on its 90 million citizens. The consequences are just too terrifying to leave to chance.
Imports take some time to reach our shores. That means that if rice runs out today, you do not place an import order tomorrow. You place the order way in advance. That way, you have ample stocks at hand. What some people call prudence, others call a glut, or an oversupply.
And aside from imports taking time to arrive, there is also that small matter of whether or not a rice exporting country agrees to sell us its rice. Surely, the ban by Russia against the exportation of its wheat should have struck some sense into some of us by now.
Now, after all the noise has been expended needlessly by that SONA disclosure, along comes Lito Banayo, Noynoy's administrator at the National Food Authority, warning the country of a rice shortage next year unless the government imports up to 1.5 million metric tons of rice.
But wasn't it just less than three months ago that the nation was told, by no less than its president, that it was literally swimming in an ocean of rice, that there was so much rice than can be consumed that some of that rice were now actually rotting?
So what happened? What is it really? Is there an actual oversupply of rice or was that simply a neat way of burnishing one's image at the expense of another's? If there is no avoiding playing politics, let it not be at the expense of something as serious as food security.