The rice crisis is serious

This rice crisis is serious. It’s really serious. The people can forgive officials stealing money in the ZTE-NBN deal or selling out our patrimony in the Spratly. Or other deals.

But when there’s no more rice in the pot, you cannot blame them if they stage a revolt. The roots of the French Revolution were the hungry people, insulted by the Queen to eat cake.

President Arroyo alone cannot be faulted though. After Marcos, all presidents neglected the rice farmers, did not think of food security, and instead went into heavy importation where corrupt officials made money.

Our rice trading agency has been one of the most corrupt and it changed names many times to erase the heavy losses and save the corrupt officials. I recall after the War, there was the PRATRA, the NAMARCO, the RCA, and the NGA, and now the NFA. Expect NFA to have a new name soon.

I remember these because of the publicity in the anomalies involving them.

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Readers of this column know how these many years I have kept on harping at this problem. I thought the crisis would come by 2010. It came two years earlier. The government does not seem to have a solution except to tell people to eat less rice. This is no solution. A bigger crisis still looms ahead.

Statistics shows we Filipinos eat an average of one-third kilo of rice a day. This means a consumption from a 90-million population of 30 million kilos a day. Or 10.95 billion a year.

How much do we produce? Government statistics have many figures but we are importing heavily.

The other day, the President said the country is importing 335,000 tons of rice. That’s just good for just a little over 11 days. And Thailand and Vietnam said they cannot export more.

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I have been to Japan and interviewed rice farmers, accompanied by my lawyer friend Rene Depasucat. I also went to Bangkok and interviewed rice farmers and went to their department  of agriculture office, accompanied by Henry Streegan. Two years ago in Saigon, Vietnam, I talked with people there about rice production with a friend Jun Rio.

In these countries, rice production and food security are the country’s main concern. They help their farmers, giving them financing help, technological and marketing support. Their cost of production is much less. In both Thailand and Vietnam, it costs less than half our cost to produce the same amount of rice.

In Japan, farmers averaging one to 3 hectares of rice farm have irrigation pump, farm implements, rice mill, rice dryer, fertilizers, and chemicals from government. They harvest only once a year. No shortage. And their population is 216 million.

The whole harvest cannot be sold to others but only to government which buys it at a premium price. Government retains the amount to pay the loan and gives to the farmer the proceeds.

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What do we see in the Philippines? A rice farmer has to fend for himself. No help. No nothing. His fertilizer and chemicals are even taxed heavily. And when he sells his produce, government comes to compete with him through NFA selling much lower than what the farmer sells.

Or if he sells to private traders, he is at the mercy of these traders, especially because this is harvest time.

He also cannot wait for a better price because his creditors who charge usurious interest are waiting to be paid.

So, what can you expect from farmers with no capital?

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The price of rice is an effective political issue. The President may not know because she was still a student at the time. But one cause that led to her father, President Diosdado Macapagal’s defeat to Ferdinand Marcos in 1965 was the price of rice.

Marcos outwitted Macapagal by diverting a big supply of rice from the market and by raising the issue of rice shortage. Prices went up. There was no more time to import. This was the idea of Rafael Salas who later became Marcos’ executive secretary. On the other side was another Ilonggo Fenny Hechanova, Macapagal’s executive secretary.

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When Marcos won, he named Salas the “Rice Czar” going around the country unannounced monitoring the work and putting up irrigation projects like the Bago river irrigation system.

Salas borrowed from the World Bank and put up the Masagana System where farmers could borrow money without collateral at low rate of interest. He also organized the BAEX (Bureau of Agricultural Extension) workers to help the farmers. And the NFA bought the palay at a premium. That was how the country exported rice.

But Salas left for the United Nations and the project collapsed.

Ask Buc-an Yulo, bosom friend of Salas and Toti Ramos, a political leader and all rice farmers in Bago, about how Salas worked to improve rice production.

A family head’s first concern is that his family does not starve. A national leader must have the same priority.*

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