MANILA, Philippines -- An alliance of leftwing farmers on Friday twitted Malacañang for convening a National Food Summit amid the rice crisis, saying this was “a waste of taxpayers’ money.”

“If the money they are using for this summit was used for procuring more rice from our farmers, it would have been better,” Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines, KMP) chair Rafael Mariano said in a statement.

Mariano said it appeared that the Arroyo administration “would rather talk about a problem than solve it.”

“Yet again Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap will just use this summit to preen and say that they are doing something to solve the rice crisis,” he said, adding:

“They will just read out their speeches and will not even listen to the voice of the majority of the farmers who are the ones feeding the nation.”

Mariano, also the president of the Anakpawis party-list group, said there was no need for a food summit because the KMP had long been proposing solutions to the problem at hand.

He said these were:

• Higher farm gate prices for palay and other agricultural products
• An increase by at least 25 percent in the local procurement of palay by the National Food Authority
• Junking of the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act and the agriculture liberalization brought by the World Trade Organization
• A stop to land use and crop conversions
• Dismantling of the rice cartel
• Implementation of genuine agrarian reform

Mariano said all the government had to do was implement these proposals, which, he claimed, would “definitely end the rice crisis and the social unrest in the countryside.” TJ Burgonio