NEWS
[VANTAGE POINT] The rice crisis
By OSCAR P. SEÑAR

Before I tackle the issue of rice, allow me to share my meditations during Holy Week. That very solemn period gave me the opportunity to reflect on the Passion and Crucifixion of our Lord and the life of Saints in heaven. It dawned on me that since it was Jesus Christ Himself who brought Dimas, the repentant thief, to heaven, then it follows that Dimas must also be a saint. However, God in His infinite wisdom and mysterious ways, probably prevented Rome from canonizing him officially, otherwise the unrepentant Filipino politicians could have made DIMAS, their Patron Saint!

The Vatican has distinctively recognized the Philippines as the cradle of Catholicism in this part of the world. As a result, it has named very important dates on the Christian calendar after Filipino Presidents. There is Domingo de Ramos, Sabado de Gloria, the feast of Sagrado Corazon de Jesus, and very soon, another important event will be named after Erap –

Ass Wednesday!

Well, the above are just jokes, but these jokes imply the current state of frustration of the Filipino people in our present leadership. We take these crises in stride, making our mind very fertile for such creative jokes. The sad thing about these problems, is that even before the present political crisis is over, another and even graver crisis looms in the horizon – the rice shortage. Once again the government is vehemently denying there is an impending crisis. Instead, it is quick to lay the blame on the world’s production shortfall.

We are now 90 million Filipinos, consuming an average per capita of 100 kilos of rice per annum. With the 3.2 million hectares planted to rice, we manage to produce only 6.9 million tons. This very dismal production yield amounts to just about 2.0 tons per hectare versus Vietnam’s 4.5 tons per hectare. Thirty (30) years ago, 5 million hectares used to be planted with rice but this area has gone significantly down due to population pressures. At this point, this country has no choice but to import the 2.1 million tons shortfall from our neighbours, like Thailand, India and Vietnam. In whatever angle I look at this issue, I see a shortage and a crisis of big proportion.

Allow me to share with you the following statistics:
- Rice is planted to 3.2 million hectares throughout the country or 23% of our total agricultural land area.
- Fifty two percent (1.7 million hectares) of the total area is irrigated; while 44% (1.4 M ha) is rain-fed lowland and 4% (128,000 ha) is upland.
- Of the 3.2 M hectares for rice, 600,000 hectares have adverse water and nutrients conditions; 100,000 ha are saline prone; 10,000 ha are alkaline; 15,000 ha have peat soil, and 500,000 hectares are acid sulfate soils.

These unfavourable soil conditions amount to 1.2 M hectares or one third of the total area planted to rice.

This year, the projected rice shortage is 2,100,000 M.T. or 30% of our normal production output. In any language, this is not a sign of normalcy. The Department of Agriculture and IRRI know exactly the solution to our problem on rice shortage. Unfortunately, there is no “money” in the real and long term solution. There is more and easy “money” in rice importation and smuggling.

About 30 years ago, then President Marcos launched Masagana 99 – a noble program meant to boost the palay yield per hectare to 99 cavans. No rice import was made at that time. The Philippine average now is a dismal 75.0 cavans per hectare for lack of a truly workable government program and infrastructure support. If the government is serious in addressing our large annual rice production deficiency, why not revisit this old Masagana 99 program - copy the good points and improve on its weak points? Remember that new rice technologies are already available at IRRI that can substantially increase our farming yield. We have to resort to yield improvement to overcome production ineffi ciencies due to our smaller farm lots, brought about by CARP. We cannot talk about economies of scale in rice farming in this small plots owned by millions of small farmers. They have to form dynamic cooperatives and resort to mechanized large scale farming in order to overcome our very high farming costs. But, is this idea acceptable among Filipino farmers and more specifi cally among CARP benefi ciaries? Politics and corruption could possibly derail this concept. We must remember that we have an increasing population to feed and a shrinking land area devoted to rice farming. The contribution of Agriculture to GDP had continually been eroded, which imply that more and more people in the provinces are going hungry. This observation is borne out by the latest survey on poverty and hunger incidences issued recently.

The rice problem we are facing is very serious and must be addressed immediately. From my simple mind, this problem is just a function “binhi”, fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide, water or irrigation, farming tools, financing and weather. We just have to integrate all of these factors into a unified farming program that is supported and monitored closely - manned by honest and well meaning people. Otherwise, no program will work at all. Rice is a commodity that is very close to the heart of every Filipino. The price of rice, for the commercial grades, has gone sky high. As people would say – “the way to man’s heart is through the stomach”. Let us not therefore deceive the people. Let us not sugar coat the problem and encourage the people to eat less rice to prolong our inventory. Let us face and address this problem squarely, with all sincerity - because this problem is much bigger than ZTE-NBN and the impact of this shortage is stronger than a powerful hurricane.

oscar.senar@gmail.com