THE UNUSUAL request of the Philippines to Vietnam last month to guarantee rice supplies of up to 1.5 million metric tons let the cat out of the bag, showing the government's concerns over a threatening rice shortage. Previously, imports were left to the global market.

The request sparked a flurry of media reports and warnings from the political sector of an impending shortage, prompting President Macapagal-Arroyo to admit last Sunday that there was "scarcity of rice" in the global market but there was no shortage of the staple--not yet, at least. There was no reason to panic, she said.

The rice crisis scare swiftly pushed out the corruption issue from dominating the public agenda. Rice shortages have historically been the most explosive issue that has unmade most governments since independence.

The most potent fuel for fomenting political and social unrest is the rising prices of food, especially rice, which is the benchmark of food prices to most Filipinos, with the poor getting hit hardest. True, rice queues have not yet appeared in the streets, but the price has scaled its highest level in more than three decades.

The global context of soaring food price was set by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who warned in a recent article published in the Washington Post, that the prices of basic staples--wheat, corn, rice--"are at record highs, up 50 percent or more in the past six months [while] global food stocks are at historic lows" (which is why the extraordinary request for assured Vietnamese rice supplies is relevant). The causes for the rising price of food, he said, "range from demand in major economies such as India and China to climate--and weather--related events such as hurricanes, floods and droughts that have devastated harvests in many parts of the world. High oil prices have increased the cost for transporting food and purchasing fertilizer. Some experts say the rise of biofuels have reduced the amount of food available for humans."

These macro causes have not however mitigated the unsettling worldwide impact, including food riots from East Africa to South Asia, in countries where food have to be imported to feed hungry populations, and "communities are rising to protest the high cost of living, and fragile democracies are feeling the pressure of food insecurity." He added that "many governments have issued export bans and price controls on food, distorting market and presenting challenges."

Josette Sheeran, head of the UN's World Food Programme, has warned that the dramatic upward surge in world commodity prices has created a "new face of hunger." She said that "there is food on shelves but people are priced out of the market. There is vulnerability in urban areas we have not seen before. There are food riots in countries where we have not seen them before."

Some WFP officials say the extraordinary increases in the global price of basic food were caused by a "perfect storm" of factors: a rise in demand for animal feed from increasingly prosperous populations in India and China, the use of more land and agricultural procedure for biofuels, and climate change.

Externalizing the outlook sounds too remote to the average Filipino, especially the poor. This gives them cold comfort and we cannot escape the current impact of the price surge on the lives of Filipinos and on the risks facing the government that has to shield the people from its effects or face the consequences of political and social unrest. One politician who called attention to the price surge, Sen. Loren Legarda, said rice prices soared to a 34-year high with the government's tender of $708 per metric ton on March 28, or more than half of its bid for orders for January. At P30 per kilo, the government's latest purchase costs more than 60 percent of the National Food Authority's subsidized price of P18.25 per kilo.

According to the Department of Agriculture, it has programmed as much as 2.4 million metric tons of rice imports this year, but the decision of Vietnam and India, two of the world's biggest rice sources, to freeze exports has contributed heavily to the tightening of supplies in the world market. Filipinos consume 11.0 million MT of rice a year, according to Legarda, but only 92 percent comes from domestic sources. Her proposal, however, for the government to undertake a massive rice planting program over the next 24 to 36 months to make the country less dependent on imports sounds too late and beyond the capacity of the government to achieve in that time frame, given the history of rice importing and the short-falls in domestic production.

The last time the country achieved self-sufficiency in rice production was in the 1960s, when the Marcos administration devoted much of the agriculture budget to a focused rice production, riding the wave of the Green Revolution Marcos put the rice-self-sufficiency program at the hands of a non-partisan technocrat, Rafael Salas.

No such circumstances exist to give the Arroyo government the incentive and capacity to embark on a crash program. Other than pleading to Vietnam to ensure its usual exports to the Philippines, her agriculture secretary, Arthur Yap, got himself into a ridiculous debate over the hilarious remark that Filipinos should tighten their belts--by eating less rice. No one is amused.