National security

The other day at a rice mill in Brgy. Taloc in Bago, a group of palay farmers gathered. Before I came they were talking about their losses in farming, especially because irrigation water will be cut off again by mid February. Please, ask Gov. Joseph Marañon to extend it for even just two weeks because many crops will be destroyed, they told me.

Yesterday, I dropped by the Governor's office but he had plenty of visitors. The crops have been bad plus with the heavy influx of NFA rice, the palay farmers will continue to incur losses, they said.

Then they showed me a copy of the Manila Bulletin report saying NFA hits 103 percent of its rice supply target for Negros Occidental.

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I said, this is very bad. The government does not seem to understand that food security is a must for every country. Food security is national security.

Recently, former NFA administrator Jesus Tanchanco in whose term the country exported rice, expressed opposition to a heavy importation of rice that destroys the local rice industry by subsidizing foreign rice growers to the detriment of local producers. Every year NFA rice importation has been doubling that the last, I think resulted in the loss to government of many billions of pesos.

Because of this some lawmakers made moves to abolish the NFA.

If all these losses were used to put up irrigation systems here in Negros this province can be a rice exporter. There are seven big rivers here and Bago River is only one of them. If all these other six rivers are tapped, you can just imagine the rice production we can make.

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But, well, government officials prefer to sacrifice local rice farmers to subsidizing foreign rice producers because of corruption.

Many know that big money goes to private pockets in importation.

A few years ago, one former NFA administrator ran for Congress. I asked another Congressman friend, how would this candidate fund his campaign. I was told, the fellow was a former NFA administrator and could afford even to bankroll two candidates.

This is the tragedy of this situation. Gov. Joseph Marañon is doing everything to promote his food security. But this heavy entry of imported rice in Negros that destroys the market and price structure will have its bad effects.

And the more rice farmers will get out of farming, these officials will like it because they can import more.

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Every country's concern is always food security, except the Philippines. In Japan, it does not import rice. They subsidize their rice producers and so they become self sufficient in rice. They even export.

There was a time Thailand was not producing enough sugar. They learned the technology from us. Now they are producing more sugar and exporting it to us. And we import rice heavily from Thailand, even if they learned the technology from IRRI in Los Baños, Laguna.

If war is declared between Thailand and the Philippines all Thailand has to do is cut off the export and stop other countries from exporting to us. And it will not take a few months and we would be raising the white flag in surrender when our people are starving.

Why did the U.S. impose a quota in our sugar in 1934? It wanted to develop the Cuban sugar industry after it saw war clouds over Asia with Japan's preparation for war. And they were right. When war was declared in 1941, the U.S. had a source of their sugar supply.

But when Cuba cut off its sugar market and the Philippines was too far, the U.S. developed an artificial sweetener.

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European countries are mostly self sufficient in food supply. Their governments see to it that their countries produces enough, even to the point of subsidizing their farmers. Why is the U.S. market for sugar lucrative? The U.S. buys sugar from abroad at a higher price. A lower price would destroy their own price structure.

Where does this put the Philippines? It is obvious with that news in The Manila Bulletin coming from Manila and not from here, there is a hidden agenda to destroy local rice producers so that NFA can import rice heavily.

With the cost of inputs escalating and the price of the product staying put, the future of rice farming is very dim. We know the people must have food but I can see a hidden agenda. Corruption! This is what is bad. I don't know if Gov. Joseph Marañon can do something here.

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I know this is just a voice in the wilderness, I told the rice farmers in that meeting.

They will just brush this aside under the guise they want to give cheap rice to the people.

What do we do? they asked. I said, if you are losing, then stop planting rice. For sure, that's what these people in government want so that they can import more.

Tragic indeed!

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We share the pain of the Leonardia family, especially Cesar and Celia on the tragic death of their daughter Binky in Oman.

This is the problem with this country. Our government does not provide employment to our people that they have to go abroad to get a job. How many more tragedies do we have to bear?*

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