Rice research agency to launch nationwide drive on ‘responsible rice consumption’

AFP file photo

MANILA, Philippines— The Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) is set launch a nationwide campaign in July aimed at promoting awareness on “responsible consumption of rice.”

“Traditionally we educate farmers on how to minimize  wastage but this time after we found out that it’s the consumers who are at fault, the effort will be shifted to the public,” PhilRice Executive Director Eufemio Rasco Jr. told Radyo Inquirer 990AM Friday.

In the IRRI study, Rasco said, the middle and middle upper classes have a tendency to waste rice. “We have no problem with the poor families; they don’t have leftovers,” he said.

He said it is high time that the public “be taught how to be responsible rice consumers.”

The rice Filipinos have wasted for a year is equivalent to the amount of rice that the country will import for 2012, a recent study said.

Rasco said every Filipino wastes about 3.3 kilos of rice per year, which when summed up would be 308, 000 metric tons equivalent to the country’s rice importation this year.

“If only we eat right and we leave no leftovers, there is no more need for us to import because we are already self-sufficient in rice,” he said.

Filipinos are dependent on rice as cheap source of carbohydrates.

Rasco said, the problem with average Filipinos is that they do not know how to cook rice properly while some are ashamed of “cleaning up their plates” during meals.

Rasco also encouraged Filipinos to consume other sources of carbohydrates like white corn, cassava, sweet potato and banana.