MANILA, Philippines—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 in Mabalacat town in Pampanga province Tuesday.
“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 (SCTEx).
But Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II said the problem was a lot worse than the Department of Agriculture was making it out to be.
Roxas suggested that the government treat the problem 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 three signs of an impending crisis—the country’s 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.
The wholesale price of premium rice rose by 31 percent and that of well-milled rice by 36 percent from 2001 to February 2008, according to data from the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics.
The Department of Agriculture has warned of a rice deficit of 2.1 million tons this year, equivalent to about two months’ consumption. To address the shortfall, the Philippines is buying rice abroad but has failed to get enough from exporting countries like Vietnam.
To make her point that the country’s rice supply was adequate, Ms Arroyo told some 1,000 residents of Mabalacat that a National Food Authority (NFA) truck loaded with rice was part of her convoy for the inaugural drive-thru of the new highway.
“We want to signal that the supply chain of rice can meet the demand,” she said.
The President did not mention or explain how her administration was going to stop the looming rice crisis as a result of tight global supply, surging prices, and shortfall in the country’s rice production.
Release P20 billion
All she said was that the SCTEx was a “food, freight and fun highway that will move people and products safe and fast to places where we live, work and play.”
Senate President Manuel Villar called on Malacańang to immediately release the P20 billion allocated for the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA) to boost the Department of Agriculture’s resources in handling the looming crisis.
One of the objectives of the AFMA is to ensure the accessibility, availability and stability of food supply at all times.
Eat rice less
Roxas noted that the country was consuming 33,000 metric tons every day. “So if you get to save 300,000 metric tons, that’s 10 days’ worth. Realistically, you cannot save all that wastage, so let’s say half of it, 150,000 metric tons, or five days’ worth. But our shortage that we have to import is 70 days’ use,” he said.
Militant farmers and urban poor groups also scoffed at Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap’s advice to Filipinos to eat rice less.
“Serving half cup rice in restaurants is not the solution to the rice crisis. This is a concrete and sad manifestation of the complete failure of rice production program of the Arroyo administration and the utter dependency on rice imports,” Rafael Mariano, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas chair, said in a statement.
“Instead of half cup of rice, the call should be rice on the table of every Filipino,” he said.
Instead of Yap’s “band-aid” suggestion, Mariano said the “real, thorough-going and long-lasting” solution to the problem were genuine agrarian reform, immediate stop to land and crop conversions, and increase in rice production.
Granaries
As of now, agro-corporations control at least 200,000 hectares of the country’s land while agricultural deals entered or to be entered into by the Philippines with China and Japan would add at least 1.2 million hectares to the lands under such corporations, according to Mariano.
He said the country’s growing dependence on rice imports had made the Philippines a rice smuggler, with the rice cartel using legitimate imports as cover to bring in smuggled rice.
After leading the inaugural drive-thru of the new highway, the President went to Malasiqui town in Pangasinan province and passed by a rice distribution booth to distribute rice packs to Grade 1 to 6 pupils.
At least 94 kilometers of the SCTEx from La Paz town in Tarlac province to Tipo town in Bataan province “will funnel food into Mega Manila from the rice granaries of Cagayan Valley, salad bowl in the Cordillera and the fruit basket that is Nueva Vizcaya,” Ms Arroyo said. With reports from Christine O. Avendańo, Gil Cabacungan Jr. and Jerome Aning
