It was just a few months ago, but it already seems ages from those days that the trumpeters of our government were screaming from every available rooftop that our economy has never seen such growth and that everything was looking rosy, all the while nonchalantly batting aside the pesky questions regarding the lack of a trickle down effect that would convert all those paper gains into tangible improvements in the lives of the nation’s poor.

During those times, even though we were being E-VAT’d to near death, and the price of gasoline was skyrocketing, and even when the prices of some basic goods were starting to inch up, the economy was doing well. The Arroyo administration’s report card was showing exceptional grades, even if it was a very short report card, since it showed only the subjects that the government wanted us to see and conveniently left out those other issues where the government would have terribly failed if grades had to be handed out.

Well, that positive outlook has changed, because even if the solid economic fundamentals that we never got to feel anyway are still there, the price of rice suddenly shot up, costing almost double in just a few months after holding its price for the longest time. It may have been tough, but over the past few years, we have been able to weather the continuous rise in gasoline prices, and even the swallow the bitter pill of EVAT, however, a food crisis, real or imagined, will make those two crosses that we have successfully borne look like child’s play.

The difference is that this nation literally runs on rice. When left with no other alternatives, the poorest of the poor can survive on a meal of just rice and salt. Laborers, construction workers, office workers, call center agents, artists, housewives, and public officials all need their daily ration of rice. The thing is, not all of us will be able to absorb the impact of rising prices. Those who have been living on a hand to mouth existence will take the brunt of the pain. The government may be able to subsidize their burden by distributing cheaper NFA rice, but as the global buying price of rice steadily marches upwards, it will become harder and harder for the government to keep buying expensive rice and selling it cheaply. There is also the problem of ensuring that the people who are availing of NFA rice are those who actually need it and are not there to make a profit from it at the government’s expense.

We are currently the world’s biggest importer of rice. The thought that our population of 90 million needs to import more rice that China’s 1.3 billion rice eaters is mind boggling, especially if you take a look a few decades back, when current rice-exporting countries used to send their scientists and agriculturists to the Philippines so we could teach them to maximize the yields of their rice fields. Years of neglect and corruption have left us where we are right now: a country that is dependent on expensive imported rice so it can feed its people. Some genius leader must have thought that those rice producing nations who initially learned from us have a debt of eternal gratitude to the Philippines, so we can count on them to supply us with cheap rice forevermore.

Aside from the doleouts and the government subsidized rice, there are no quick fixes to this problem. We will have to wait it out while our agricultural sector gets itself back into shape. It would have been excusable if our land area were miniscule like Singapore or the Vatican, or mostly infertile like Japan, but the Philippines has enough agriculturally fertile land, and was even one of the pioneers in the development and production of high yielding rice. For us to become the world’s biggest importer of rice, something must have gone terribly wrong.