MANILA, Philippines—Grain dealers in North Cotabato province are complaining of limited rice stocks sold by the National Food Authority, blaming the shortage on the sale of the staple to neighboring provinces by unscrupulous NFA employees.
The grain dealers accused the state agency of serving the needs of the provinces of Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao, depriving North Cotabato rice retailers of their supply.
Mayor Joselito Piñol of Mlang town and his brother Efren Piñol of Magpet town told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that they had been swamped by complaints that some 14,000 sacks of rice imported from Vietnam intended for North Cotabato had been sold to “outsiders,” leaving the supposed beneficiaries of the cheap NFA cereal with limited stock.
“This is unfair and, I suppose, an illegal activity that we have to look into,” Efren Piñol said.
The Piñols find it ironic that the NFA is selling its stocks to nearby provinces and municipalities in the face of a looming rice shortage in the country.
Global rice crisis
The world is facing a rice crisis and the Philippines is scrambling to import rice to cover its shortfall.
The country produces about 90 percent of its rice requirement and must import up to 2.1 million metric tons to maintain its two-month inventory.
The Philippines paid about $708 per ton at a tender this month for imported rice, more than double what it paid six months ago.
The NFA, the grain purchasing arm of the government that spends billions of pesos every year subsidizing rice to the public, is now one of the biggest drags on public finances, with net liabilities in 2006 of nearly P43 billion.
Limited impact
But the NFA has only a limited impact. In local markets, traders often tell customers they are out of NFA rice, which is kept at P18.25 a kilogram, forcing them to pay nearly P30 per kg for other varieties.
Mariano Bernad, newly installed North Cotabato NFA manager, said allegations that rice stocks meant for the province had been diverted to Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao were baseless.
Bernad said that there was abundant NFA rice supply for North Cotabato and that the rice was being made available to everybody, particularly the poor, at the “government-controlled price.”
The small rice traders alleged that the NFA rice sold to “outsiders” earned bigger profits that went to the pockets of enterprising NFA employees.
Cover-up
North Cotabato Gov. Jesus Sacdalan said he had ordered his staff to check the veracity of the complaints brought to his attention by the Piñol brothers, who suggested that an inventory of NFA rice stocks be made.
At the height of the Moro rebellion in the 1970s, reports of alleged irregularities in the NFA rice distribution in Central Mindanao were covered up by making it appear that NFA warehouses were razed by guerrillas, North Cotabato Vice Gov. Manny Piñol recalled.
The fires happened at a time when some NFA personnel sensed that a Commission on Audit team from Manila would investigate missing NFA rice stocks.
Land conversion
In the Senate, Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri said “wanton conversion” of rice lands particularly in Central and Southern Luzon into residential subdivisions and commercial districts was the “most significant factor” that led to the rice crisis.
Zubiri called the press conference to pin the blame on land conversion and defend his pet project, the biofuels program, which Sen. Francis Escudero had tagged as the culprit for the vanishing rice fields.
Chronic neglect
Escudero said the Arroyo administration’s “chronic neglect” of the agriculture sector had led to its failure to achieve food security.
“We are now defining food security as the ability to grow our food but to simply have the money to buy it elsewhere and thus we deserted irrigation, abandoned farms, and neglected post-harvest facilities. So when foreign food becomes more expensive, we do not have a vibrant farm sector to fall back on,” he said.
Sen. Jamby Madrigal noted that trade liberalization had led to the country’s dire rice situation because imports soared to over one million metric tons a year in 1995-2006 from 151,588 metric tons from 1984 to 1994.
Corporate rice production
In the House of Representatives, Speaker Prospero Nograles proposed that the country’s top businesses start planting rice to address the needs of their employees and their families.
Nograles noted that “corporate farming” was done during the Marcos regime to ensure the food supply of the corporations’ work force and its dependents.
Palawan Rep. Abraham Mitra, chairman of the committee on agriculture and food, said in Filipino in a text message: “The top 100 corporations should be required to plant rice for the employees and their families so that they would not have to compete for the current low supply [of rice].
“They have the capability and funds for planting unlike the ordinary, working Filipino,” Mitra said.
“They should help the government curb this problem because their employees would be the ones to suffer,” he said.
Mitra made the proposal a day after Sen. Loren Legarda warned of a “politically explosive” situation brought about by the rising cost of rice in the country.
Increase farm-gate prices
House Deputy Minority Leader Satur Ocampo of the party-list Bayan Muna wants the strengthening of the NFA’s local procurement capacity by raising farm-gate prices and by dismantling the rice cartels.
Ocampo also proposed that government abandon its liberalization policy on rice, stop land-use conversion from agricultural to other types and realign debt service and anti-insurgency budgets to food production.
For its part, the Centro Saka and the National Rice Farmers Council (NRFC) said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s recent directive for the release of P1.5 billion to augment the Department of Agriculture’s budget to increase rice production was a case of “too little too late.”
In a statement, Omi Royandoyan of the farmer-based research NGO Centro Saka said the current crisis was the result of years of neglect of agriculture.
The government’s hybrid rice commercialization program, which relies heavily on private seed producers, is flawed, according to Centro Saka. In fact, despite the billions poured into the program, hybrid rice contributes only 12 percent of production, it said.
Under existing policies, the growth in rice yield from 3.07 metric tons per hectare in 2000 to 3.68 metric tons per hectare in 2006 was hardly significant given the steady rise in population, according to Centro Saka.
“Also telling is the near stagnant growth in rice harvested area at around 4 million hectares,” said Jimmy Tadeo of the NFRC.
In Libmanan, Camarines Sur, Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said he never meant to tell Filipinos to eat less when he urged fast-food outlets last week to offer half portions of rice because of a looming rice shortage.
Yap said it was the NFA’s suggestion that he urge fast-food outlets to offer a “half-rice-serving” option to their customers.
Deputy presidential spokesperson Lorelai Fajardo said not only the government but everyone must do something to help mitigate the impact of the global rice shortage.
“Maybe our countrymen should be aware of this problem and that they should put on their plates only what they could eat because a lot of rice is being wasted,” Fajardo said in Filipino on radio.
“As what Secretary Yap has said, at least 30 percent of what we are not able to consume become trash, especially in restaurants. This is why even restaurant owners are encouraged to serve half rice especially to those who do not eat much,” she said.
Fajarado said the administration was also doing something, citing the mitigating measures that government agencies have implemented to address the problem.
“In other words, we are prepared to address the rice crisis but nevertheless, even if there is no crisis, we still encourage people to save regardless of whether this is oil, rice, even water and electricity,” she said.
Enough supply in the Visayas
Despite warnings of a possible rice supply crisis, several provinces in the Visayas still have sufficient supply for the next few months.
In Central Visayas, NFA information officer Edgar Diez said the buffer stock of rice was around 600,000 bags, which is good for three months.
Grace Dagala, Department of Agriculture information officer in Region 7 (Central Visayas), also noted that the region’s rice production had increased.
Vilma Zarraga, officer in charge of the NFA in Western Visayas, said the rice inventory in the region, estimated at 4.2 million bags, could last for 72 days.
The daily rice consumption in the region stands at 58,000 bags or 1.74 million bags monthly, according to Zarraga.
Zarraga said she also expected the arrival of imported rice from Thailand, Vietnam and Pakistan, consisting of 126,000 bags for Negros Occidental and 74,000 bags for Iloilo.
Negros Occidental Gov. Isidro Zayco said NFA records showed that the province had a rice inventory of 1.4 million bags, enough to supply the province’s requirement for 61 days.
The Capiz provincial agriculturist office also maintained that the province would have ample supply of rice because the recent flooding damaged only 4,888 hectares of the 19,000 hectares planted to rice.
NFA Leyte provincial manager Amador Gregorio also said the province had sufficient supply of rice. With reports from Ephraim Aguilar, Inquirer Southern Luzon; Carla P. Gomez, Nestor P. Burgos Jr., Joey A. Gabieta, Felipe Celino and Jhunnex Napallacan, Inquirer Visayas and Maila Ager, INQUIRER.net
