In pursuit of health

Who says Filipinos are careless in matters of health? If the long queues to buy a few kilos of rice is any indicator, they are aggressive in asserting their right to survive, knowing that their staple food will keep them alive for a while longer. They know that there is no medicine to cure hunger. And this behavior is far from being panic, activity that our great leader Ate Glue has warned the public from a perception of a rice shortage.

Expect prices of rice to go up but the country will not experience a shortage of the staple despite shortfalls in global supply, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said. “Many are worried because there is a rice shortage around the world, that we will have a rice shortage. The price of rice would increase a bit but there would be no shortage. The supply is continuous,” Ms Arroyo said at the trial run of the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway

Of course there was neither panic nor a rice shortage. The true cause? It was humdrum business as usual – a few slick operators conniving with dishonest employees of the National Foods Authority (NFA) re-bagging cheap subsidized rice for resale as higher-priced commercial rice. But the news of the scam and the rising global prices of grains and soy urged the Palace to issue a pre-emptive advisory on rising prices, which, issued in the midst of swirling corruption scams implicating the Palace, backfired. The suspicion was another cover-up (also known as executive privilege) for a lie similar to the Bolante fertilizer scam.

However, ignoring its own warning, officialdom went into panic mode. The frantic hustle and bustle to avert hunger pangs and to convince the public that there is no impending food shortage went from the fanciful to ridiculous:

Arroyo OKs P1.5B to boost rice production

LGUs urged to activate price monitors on rice

Arroyo convenes NAPC, NEDA to tackle rice problem

PGMA invites GOCC's to cabinet meeting and asks them to present initial plans to alleviate rice situation
Church asked to help sell NFA rice

Gov’t financial institutions present to PGMA their respective rice and other pro-poor plans

Proposed that government-owned and-controlled corporations (GOCCs) go into farming to help raise the country’s food production.

Threatens rice traders with hoarding raps Traders won’t buy more rice, fear hoarding raps

Tells LGUs to assist in food for school program

PGMA certified as urgent a bill seeking to extend the CARP Law, the charade of land reform that we all know simply does not work; it does not benefit the farmers and it definitely does not work to ensure national food security.
Threatened the public with an innovative crime, household hoarding

But Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II said the problem was a lot worse than the Department of Agriculture was making it out to be. He suggested that the problem be treated as a calamity like a super typhoon or an earthquake and use funds intended for these disasters to prevent an acute shortage of the staple. “It’s better to be prepared early than to be sorry later on,” he said.

Roxas identified the three signs of an impending crisis—our traditional rice sources such as Thailand and Vietnam could not commit to any volume; the price of rice has jumped sharply in the world market, and the agriculture secretary has suggested that people cut their normal serving of rice from one cup to one half.

An email from Sweden:

The looming rice crisis must not be mistaken for a natural food shortage. It is a human disaster waiting to happen due to policy and institutional failures. … the International Rice Research Institute is in the Philippines. It is developing high-yielding rice varieties. Yet, the Philippines imports rice. …the looming crisis is a result of a policy failure that can be traced to the following: 1. The expansion of banana plantations, notably in Mindanao, at the expense of thousands of hectares of rice fields turned into banana plantations.

2. The focus of the Department of Agriculture (DA) on biofuels. The DA should focus more on helping farmers get more incentives from rice production. With the DA’s current thrust, it is either we eat bananas, or process and export tons of jatropha. The Vietnamese agriculture minister has pointed to massive industrialization in Vietnam as a threat to his country’s capability to feed its own population in the future. Meaning, our government’s plea with Vietnam for rice guarantees in the future does not hold water.

3. Naturally, farmers would prefer to produce more profitable crops.

Suggested solution: common sense. If we want to eat rice rather than eat bananas, we should plant more rice and search for other methods that are kind to the pocketbook as well as the environment such as organic farming and System of Rice Intensification (SRI).

To be sure, Filipinos are not careless on matters of health. They know that there is no medicine to cure hunger, and they know that food, particularly rice, is essential for their health. But there is a caveat – the rice must be affordable.