PRESIDENT Macapagal-Arroyo said last Tuesday that the country would not suffer a rice shortage but added that the people should expect the prices of the grain to go up.
The actions of the President and other administration officials, however, belie her assurance of sufficient supply. Ms Arroyo's request to Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung last month to see if he could guarantee the Philippines up to 1.5 million metric tons of rice was exceptional and pointed up official concern. Also unusual was Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap's suggestion to fast-food outlets to offer their customers the option to order half a cup of rice.
Sen. Mar Roxas, "Mr. Palengke" himself, said there are three signs of an impending rice crisis: the country's traditional rice sources such as Thailand and Vietnam could not commit to any volume, the price of rice has risen sharply in the world market, and Yap suggested that people reduce their normal serving of rice from one cup to one-half.
So, what is it? Is the nation facing a rice shortage or not? If it is facing a shortage, the people should be told frankly that there is a shortage and should also be informed about the measures that the government and the private sector are taking to mitigate the shortage. Rice is the most important food commodity in the Philippines; a shortage would mean hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Filipinos going hungry.
The first thing that has to be done is to assure the people of a sufficient supply of rice beginning in October or November, when the Christmas season is about to start. The holidays will bring a greater demand for rice which is eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. A big shortage of rice or a very sharp increase in its price will surely bring down the ire of the people on the head of Ms Arroyo.
Rice, of which 32,000 metric tons is consumed by Filipinos daily, is truly a political commodity. Even the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos was aware of this fact of life, and that's why during a severe rice shortage some time in the 1970s, he ordered truckloads of rice, escorted by rifle-carrying soldiers, rushed to areas hard hit by the crisis.
Many Filipinos can go without meat, pork, chicken, fish and vegetables, but they will consider it the worst kind of deprivation to have to go for days without rice. The poorest of the poor are content to have just steaming rice on which water and salt or patis (fish sauce) have been sprinkled for their one or two meals of the day. And yet they are among those whom Yap would ask to reduce their rice consumption to one-half cup per meal. This sounds somewhat like Marie Antoinette's insensitive statement: "They want bread; let them eat cake!"
The Philippines attained self-sufficiency in rice for a brief period during the Marcos administration. Since then it has been a sad history of recurring shortage. Many of our neighbors consider this situation strange because the Philippines has always been known as an agricultural, rice-producing country. Also, it has the best agricultural school in the region--the UP College of Agriculture at Los Baños--and in addition, is the base of the International Rice Research Institute. Students from Vietnam and Thailand studied the latest techniques in rice cultivation at Los Baños, returned to their countries and built up a thriving rice export industry. The Philippines is now one of their biggest customers.
The current concern over an impending rice shortage should prompt the government to adopt a rational and integrated rice production program. It has to accelerate the agrarian reform program so that farmers would have more land on which to cultivate rice. It has to moderate the conversion of rice lands to lands for the cultivation of corn and alternative crops as well as their use for subdivisions and entertainment or commercial complexes. It has to stop the operations of the rice cartel which buys rice cheap from the farmers and makes a killing selling it at high prices. It has to build more irrigation systems and distribute more fertilizers to boost productivity.
The impending rice crisis is literally a life-and-death problem. First, the government has to tell the people frankly whether the country is facing a rice shortage. Then, the government has to take urgent measures before the situation gets out of hand.
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