Let us scream!

The government implemented in full, starting yesterday, the 12 percent expanded value added tax. Tighten your belts. With the increase of gasoline and diesel prices yesterday, expect the prices to rise.

What do we do? Headlined one national paper yesterday, "Time to bite the bullet."

Biting the bullet means enduring pain courageously, facing adversity with fortitude, or behaving stoically.

This expression was a way of making soldiers facing operation during the time before anaesthesis. Surgeons would put bullet in a mouth, a soldier bite so that he could not scream as screams always distract the surgeons.

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In the face of these problems, this adversity, shall we put a bullet in our mouth, bite it so that we cannot make a sound?

No! Let us scream. And scream loudly!

If we have faced these problems, one reason was that earlier we did not scream enough. Or if we did, we were not heard.

The people worst hit by this e-vat, this big increase in the prices of everything are the poor in the rural areas. These are the palay farmers who are hit hard. I was with the Negros Farmers Cooperative in Brgy. Busay in Bago the other day. And if you only listen to their lament you feel like running to the mountains, if knees were still supple, and take up arms.

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Their problem is the heavy importation of rice by NFA that the rice they produce is still pegged from an average of no more than an equivalent of P700, some even less at only P600 while production costs have escalated.

They lament that while sugar costs at more than P1,000 to a 50-kilo bag, to the rice farmer it sells at no more than P400 a bag palay or at a little more than P600 cleaned rice. It is the trader who gets profit.

At this price, palay farming is less profitable than sugar farming. And the culprit is the heavy importation of rice by the National Food Authority.

And importation is always accompanied by graft and corruption. That is why people in government just want to import and import to the detriment of our food security.

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While writing this piece yesterday, my friend Neil Honeyman texted me if NFA is responsible for our food security. As an office under the Department of Agriculture, it is the job of NFA to provide food security.

But its concept of food security is not producing food but importing it.

Neil asked if the country can increase its rice production of 6 million tons to 8.5 million tons. Yes, but it looks like the country does not want to as it prefers to import.

Last year, said a news item, NFA lost tens of billions of pesos. Why must NFA lose when the price of rice in Thailand or Vietnam is less than half of the price of our rice?

I know. I have gone to Bangkok and together with Henry Streegan interviewed people at its Department of Agriculture. The problem was I could not get enough data.

And yet NFA lost. Why should it lose? And, in the process, also destroy the Philippine rice industry?

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Can we produce 8.5 million tons? Yes, but not overnight.

In yesterday's news, it said the P500 million from the Marcos loot recovered by PCGG was used for the reelection of President Arroyo.

And P720 million was used to "buy fertilizer" allegedly for the farmers, but charges said, they did not go to the farmers.

If the losses incurred by NFA all these years, plus all the money diverted for election purposes, were used to put up irrigation systems, this country could have been a rice exporter.

The Bago irrigation system is a big help to Negros Occidental. I know there are six other big rivers in the province. If these NFA losses and other money like that taken from the Marcos loot were used to put up irrigation systems, Negros Occidental can be a rice exporter.

* * *

The problem is we do not want to tell our people to sacrifice for future food security. Our political leaders are afraid that if the price of staple food goes up, that it would be an election issue.

But, if people are made to believe the sacrifice is for their own good and they do not see graft and corruption, they will cooperate.

The problem here is graft and corruption. We all know importations are always attended by corruption. This is what the people cannot accept.*

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