Stockpile food, not farmers

After the embargo on Qatar by its neighbors, I’ve heard some say that this should teach us to go for full self-sufficiency in food, particularly our staple rice, as soon as we can.

I am not convinced. I don’t believe this is the “lesson” the Qataris are learning right now. If anything, hindsight must be telling them that they should have stockpiled more food, especially grain. I don’t see them wishing they had “stockpiled” more farmers, to produce all their food by themselves. And I have no doubt they could do that, just as I have no doubt the Philippines can produce all its rice. That would always be possible, with the right science. But in an area so inhospitable to farming by
the nature of their lands (or should I say sands), it would be at such high cost that “stockpiling” farmers to be self-sufficient could only mean either of two things: subsidize farmers heavily, or force much higher food prices on consumers, or both. Both imply restricting food imports via high tariffs or quantitative restrictions—and that’s what would drive domestic food prices higher than otherwise. Maybe Qatar could afford it, with its oil-based wealth. We can’t.

It’s useful to be clear what a country is guarding against, in the concern for food security focused on food availability. There are actually only four scenarios that could lead a country into food scarcity: (1) temporary crop failure or bad harvest (say from drought or typhoon damage), (2) prolonged crop failure or bad harvest (maybe due to climate change),
(3) temporary supply cut-off from outside (say from a political/military blockade a la Qatar), or (4) indefinite supply cut-off (North Korea and Cuba being the closest examples).

Let’s take crop failures, whether temporary or prolonged. It should be obvious that subsidies or trade restriction (i.e., “stockpiling” farmers) would do nothing to avoid the problem. On the contrary, trade (imports) is precisely the solution in times of shortage induced by a bad harvest. In the case of prolonged bad harvest, say due to climate change, having more farmers translates to having more victims to suffer the harm. Thus, I cannot buy the argument that the threat of climate change should prompt us to pursue full self-sufficiency. It is well known that we are the most climate change vulnerable nation in the Asean. If climate change were to affect rice and food production, our farms would be first to get hit, certainly before those in the Greater Mekong delta on the Asean mainland. If we were to “stockpile” farmers in fear of climate change, we would only raise the magnitude of hardship that our greater vulnerability could bring, once prolonged droughts hit.

What about politically induced supply cut-offs? In a temporary embargo or siege (I can think of only one country that will conceivably do that to us; we all know which one), it should again be clear that trade protection that raises domestic rice price to our people is not the right approach. The correct way to protect ourselves against such an eventuality would be to stockpile rice to have a buffer stock enough to last through at least one cropping season (i.e., around 90 days). The rationale here is that we can reallocate lands and mobilize enough new production that will provide for our needs by the time buffer stocks run out. Keeping an open trade policy allows domestic rice prices to more closely approximate the prices paid by Thai, Vietnamese and other Asean consumers, and not have Filipinos pay up to twice as much. But when the staple is much more costly as it is now, it crowds out other needed foods from a poor family’s budget and diet, leading them to malnutrition. The fact is, rice price is the underlying cause of much more prevalent malnutrition and child stunting in the Philippines, relative to its neighbors—yet our misguided agricultural policy continues to be focused on production, rather than human welfare.

The only case where “stockpiling” farmers could make sense is an indefinite supply cut-off. But that possibility is so remote, that letting such unlikely prospect shape our rice policy is no different from a ban on all Muslims, on the reasoning that some Muslims are terrorists.
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