MANILA, Philippines - It is another measure of the Arroyo Administration’s credibility deficit that its latest initiatives to prepare for an impending rice shortage have been met not only with skepticism but with outright suspicion. The news that tariff rates on rice may be drastically reduced, for example, caused not a few to suspect that rice traders close to Malacañang had stage-managed the looming rice crisis in the first place—precisely to bring the rates down.

This is an unfortunate perception, because a dramatic shortage in the rice supply is inevitable. As we pointed out in our March 10 editorial, it is time to sound the alarm about the coming food emergency. Increased pressures on rice supply and rising food prices are an international reality. It is a reality, however, with an expiry date. Officials at the World Food Program forecast that the price of rice will continue to increase “probably at least until 2010.”

Whether the emergency will worsen into a rice crisis is a distinct issue—distinct but not separate, because it too depends largely on both the administration’s initiatives and its own struggles with credibility.

As it is, the perception that the administration is considering an end to the National Food Authority’s monopoly on rice imports because it will benefit friendly rice traders is not helping matters. It exists, it is given credence by a suspicious public, because of the corruption and election fraud scandals that have branded the administration. And it is believed because the public expects the government to have prevented any rice shortage in the first place. In this view, our agriculture-dependent economy is running out of rice only because the concerned officials are either crooked or incompetent.

Or woefully short-sighted. The real problem, said Robert Zeigler, president of the International Rice Research Institute, is that “there is just not enough land.”

Why this is so (extrapolating from Zeigler’s insight) is a function of two factors: rapid population growth and irresponsible land use conversion.

The country’s population has grown by about 30 million in the 18 years since 1990. Put another way, our population has grown by half since 1990, from 60.7 million to a projected 90.4 million this year. The pressure on the rice supply chain to meet the greatly increased demand is consequently severe. “That is why we are importing rice,” said Leocadio Sebastian, executive director of the Philippine Rice Research Institute.

But the total hectarage dedicated to rice farming has also declined, because of many landowners using the privileges of land use conversion to convert their land into residential areas or golf courses or industrial estates.

The only good news in this dismal and continuing story is that our farmers’ productivity is higher than ever.

Sebastian notes that total rice production in the Philippines has in fact grown steadily, from 14.6 million metric tons in 2005 to 15.3 million MT in 2006 to 16.3 million MT in 2007 (a remarkable one-year increase of 1 million MT). This year, rice production is projected to reach 17.2 million MT.

Our rice yields are double those of Thailand, Zeigler noted, adding: “I hope that if the situation becomes tight in the Philippines, the Filipinos will not point fingers at the Filipino rice farmer.”

But the reality is: Thailand is one of the world’s top rice exporters, while we are a major importer. This year alone, we will import as much as 2 million MT, much of it from Vietnam, and at hundreds of dollars a ton. Why? There isn’t enough land planted to rice, the country’s main staple.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said his department will expand total hectarage planted to rice during the wet season to 2.54 million hectares. This is a good start. Other measures the administration has announced are necessary in the short term to ensure adequate supply of rice: direct selling by the NFA, a no-pickup policy imposed on traders, the introduction of so-called break packaging (the smaller units will help prevent illegal diversion of NFA stock), and so on. But the long-term solution lies in land. More land, planted to rice.