Curtains   for goldilocks

An ancient myth claims that Ifugaos built those towering mountain terraces in thanksgiving to heaven for the gift of rice.  But soon this gift on our dinner tables may dwindle.

“We’re still using our earlier cheap imports,” Albay Governor (and economist) Joey Salceda said.  But “once we run out of stock,” the reality of skyrocketing food prices will bite.

Worldwide, rice prices surged 36 percent over the last three years, International Rice Research Institute notes. A Visayan and Northern Mindanao staple, corn prices today are 88 percent higher.  Pan de sal comes from wheat, which costs 200 percent more.  Prices for milk, meat and fish more than doubled.

Food crises already afflict 36 countries, the Food and Agriculture Organization notes. “Price volatility” spilled over into 2008. This dunned UN’s World Food Program an extra $505 million it did not have. The United States’ AID is clipping food shipments for poorest countries. So, is Catholic Relief Services.

“This could be the breakdown of the ‘Goldilocks’ era” when food prices kept an even keel for three decades, notes BBC science correspondent Tom Feilden. This stability is ending. “And we are on the cusp of a new era of volatility and rising prices.”

In Asia, governments can crumble when rice runs short. Tham bat bon mam, says a Vietnamese proverb. “Forget the food but seize the rice”.

Poor families spend more than half their skimpy incomes for food. “These are people with the broken ploughs who bear the face of hunger: men, women and children for who it is almost too late…” The impact of high cereal prices can be devastating on them.

Doubled cost of tortillas erupted in Mexico City protests. A January Social Weather Station report found 2.9 million Filipino families, experiencing “involuntary hunger”. That’s lower than the nine year high of September but well over the average, in SWS quarterly surveys, since mid-1998. “Overall hunger declined in the balance of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, but increased in Metro Manila.”

“Increased food prices and their threat – not only to people but also to political stability – have made it a matter of urgency to draw the attention it needs,” World Bank president Robert Zoellick told the Davos economic forum January. “Hunger and malnutrition are (now) the forgotten Millennium Development Goal.”

In a crunch, the affluent re-arrange their menus. But the poor must pull in their belts by yet another notch.  Yet, this storm didn’t blow up over night.  The “broader upswing” in food prices started, almost unnoticed, in 2001. There’s little mystery where those price spikes stem from.

Today, there are more mouths around the cooking pot.  Final results of the delayed Philippine census haven’t been released. But scientists already use 89 million for today’s headcount – a far cry from 19 million in 1940.  Global population could crest at nine billion by 2050.

Changing diets of richer people, in countries like China and India, are generating a whole new tier of middle-class consumers. Their increased demand pushes against stressed fishing grounds and eroded land, even as migration paves over farms. “Asphalt is the last crop.” Granaries haven’t been restocked. Changing rainfall patterns, due to climate change, are altering harvests, Asian Development Bank notes.

Virgin Airlines ran a glitzy TV spiel on using bio-fuel for its 747 jets. Today about 11 percent of the world’s maize is converted into biofuel. This jacks up food demand more.  “Rarely has the world felt such widespread and commonly shared concern about food price inflation,” Food Outlook notes. Perhaps, that excludes those who jockey for he 2010 elections.

But   inattention will not make this crisis go away. “The root causes – high energy and fertilizer prices, demand for food crops in biofuel production and low food stocks – are likely to prevail in the medium term”, World Bank notes.  Some of us may be dead by then. Here, death rates for kids, under five, here is 34 for every 1000 births. Compare that to Malaysia’s 12.

National Food Authority is now scampering to buy 1.6 million tons of rice this year – to close the gap.  But the bill will be much stiffer. And Mr. Salceda, meanwhile, talks of trimming duties on corn, soybeans, wheat subsidies for the poorest, etc. He even has a “Catch 22” proposal: Congress should pass the cheaper medicine bill.

Fine. But that’s ad-hoc reaction for paying too little attention to long-need support for the men and women who raise the food for our dinner tables – in credit, technology, research, extension. “Dependence on others brings a perpetual fast,” an Asian proverb says.

Unnoticed, high food prices could interlock with an explosive but still barely-debated issue: the Philippines breaking ranks with Asean countries to allow China “concessions”, including even exploring the Philippines continental shelf in the Spartly Islands.  Was this in exchange for series of Chinese loans now marred by kickback controversies?

Was there a provision in the ZTE contract saying: Chinese courts would have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes; that it’s decisions would be unappealable; and could be executed against Philippine properties anywhere?  The ZTE contract disappeared the day after it was signed.   

“Treason” is the new word that has crept into this issue. Hunger interlocking with treason in a country that still recoils from the Makapilis of World War II guarantees bitter controversy ahead. “Blast the man who owes his greatness to his country’s ruin” remains good counsel.*

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