A challenge to rice eaters

It’s a cliché in our culture. When a student underperforms or is particularly lazy, the teacher invariably heaps the harshest insult she can on the youth. “Just go home and plant camote!”

The pejorative falls on both the student and on the crop. The student is judged too useless for anything else other than planting camote or sweet potato, while the root crop is deemed too humble and even worthless.

But as it turns out, one could not be more wrong. Especially these days when rising rice prices amid worrying shortages are prompting a second look at alternative crops that can wean us Filipinos from our preference for and devotion to rice.

Most recently, Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin, who was health secretary during the Aquino administration, urged the Department of Agriculture to lead the effort to promote camote as an alternative to rice. One way of doing so, she said, was “to increase production and make the necessary investment in root crops in terms of agricultural research, food technology, or marketing.” Garin observed that “our love for rice has given birth to the famous ‘extra rice’ and ‘unli rice’ cultures,” despite the rising prices and ever-present threat of shortages that need to be addressed by growing imports.

For decades, rice production has been a problematic issue for the government, prompting the Duterte administration, for one, to introduce rice tariffication in 2019 to increase supply. The policy in turn has been blamed for unbridled rice imports that now imperil local production. Indeed, the Federation of Free Farmers recently warned of a shortage next year because of low palay output and the damage on rice crops left by Supertyphoon “Karding.”

The shift to an alternative to rice is also supported by health authorities, who see polished white rice, which many Filipinos prefer, as one of the causes of the epidemic of diabetes and other lifestyle diseases among Filipinos.

But as a rice-eating nation, which used to be a top producer and exporter of the basic staple, many people would frown on any proposal to totally discard rice from our tables.

“It’s high time we changed our attitude toward both rice and root crops,” remarks Garin, clarifying that she isn’t saying that people completely abandon rice, but rather “include root crops as part of one’s diet, as root crops are beneficial to overall nutrition.” While countries like Japan, South Korea, and the United States have adopted sweet potatoes as a “superfood,” noted the former health chief, here the crop is rejected out of hand and seen as inferior. But camote, she noted, provides benefits such as being rich in fiber which can help lower hypertension, bad cholesterol, and blood sugar. And even as camote is plentiful, many Filipinos patronize fast food fare that includes imported french fries, which recently became scarce because of the disruption of global supply chains spawned by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As early as 2019, the Department of Agriculture (DA), then headed by former secretary William Dar, sought to focus more research and development on high-value crops, including camote and other root and tuber crops. These, Dar said, were worth the effort to prop up food production and boost the country’s food security and resilience to climate-change effects like strong typhoons, flash floods, landslides, or even a long season of drought.

Even then, according to a news report, Dar said the department already recognized the huge contribution of root and tuber crops to the agricultural economy, citing the country’s production of two tubers—cassava and sweet potato—which totaled 3.25 million metric tons valued at P2.7 billion at 2019 prices. He added that the DA had ensured the availability of high-quality seeds and planting materials through its high-value crops development program that provided priority root and tuber crops, especially to indigenous communities.

All that’s needed, it seems, is to foster an open mind among ordinary Filipinos when it comes to regarding camote and the like as a regular part of their daily diet. Diego Naziri of the research center of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, describes root and tuber crops, particularly the camote, as very resilient. In the aftermath of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” that saw farms destroyed, root and tuber crops, particularly the sweet potato, survived the devastation. “We have very good examples where root and tuber crops became instrumental in recovery from shocks,” said Naziri. All around the world, he added, root and tuber crops remain the last crop standing amid the devastating effect of climate change-induced weather events.

So Maa’m Teacher was wrong. The feckless student sent home to plant camote may just end up saving the rest of the country from starvation and freeing Filipinos from our obsession with rice.