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DAVAO
CITY—Ellen Gomez, 31, is anxious about rice prices
since some reports predict that the grain’s cost may
reach more than P40 or P50 a kilo by middle of this
year.
But, for
the meantime, she temporarily forgets her anxiety by
mixing imported Vietnam rice sold at National Food
Authority (NFA) outlets with the 7-tonner variety to
make a more palatable cooked mixture.
“I would
mix two kilos of the SP [referring to the NFA rice] with
four kilos of the 7-tonner because the taste would pass
for a well-milled variety,” Gomez, who has two children,
told the BusinessMirror. “It’s 1:2. Well, it could also
be 1:1 mixture, but the taste would be better with the
Banaybanay 7-tonner variety.”
Gomez
resides in Agdao, the largest slum colony east of
downtown Davao, and commutes daily to her workplace as a
cashier in one of the city’s more frequented
restaurants. The establishment that Gomez works for,
like many grilled chicken and seafood restaurants in the
area, continues to offer “unlimited rice” to increase
sales and strengthen its competitive advantage.
But as
reports have emphasized the uncertainty of the country’s
grains production, both Gomez and the rest of the
rice-consuming Filipinos, and the restaurants here, are
taking a second look at their family pockets and
corporate coffers’ capability to hold on to offering
those extra grains for free to diners.
The NFA
already released volumes of sacks of rice to the market
to ease the pressure on prices, which already breached
the P30-a-kilo level since Monday here.
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap has blamed population
increase as one of the triggers of the abnormality in
supply of the Filipinos’ main staple crop, which also
pushed prices in only a short span this month.
However,
in Mindanao, where the country’s rice bowl, Cotabato, is
located, population increase is just one reason of the
apparent grain shortage. It’s also the conversion of
once rice-growing areas to other crops, which show an
erratic, though gradually declining hectareage devoted
to growing rice.
The
Soccsksargen growth region, which lumps together the
Cotabato provinces (South Cotabato, North Cotabato, or
currently known only as Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat,
Sarangani and General Santos City) has increased though.
Areas in which rice was planted rose to 310,865 hectares
compared with 218,330 hectares 12 years ago.
But
since 1999, when areas planted with the grain reached
its peak of 336,653 hectares, the total area began to
gradually dwindle to 321,506 the following year, 314,000
in 2001 and down to 306,243 hectares in 2003.
The
trend was broken only in 2004, when the area was
increased to 325,102, but again, in 2005, the decline
continued at 310,865 hectares, figures from the Bureau
of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) show.
The
Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao reached 199,735
hectares in 2005, mainly contributed by Maguindanao, the
province that was once the bigger province of the
Cotabato river basin region, and Lanao del Sur.
It’s
improvement was erratic though, from 151,300 in 1994 to
163,209 in 1996, falling down to 119,424 hectares in
1998, climbing steeply to 153,935 hectares the following
year, only to decline the following year, and then
steadily increasing in 2005.
The next
top rice-producing region, the Zamboanga peninsula,
showed improvement though, from 151,574 hectares in 2000
to a gradually increasing trend reaching 158,585
hectares in 2005.
Northern
Mindanao, the fourth-largest area to contribute to the
country’s rice production, dipped consistently.
In 1995
it had 139,611 hectares, falling to 127,417 hectares in
1997, then shooting up to 146,207 hectares in 2001, but
reducing its hectareage to 124,871 in 2005.
Meanwhile, with 116,766 hectares allotted for rice,
Caraga improved its performance, only to be pulled down
by the
Davao
region, where the bulk of rice and coconut plantations
were being converted to banana, vegetables and other
crops, including mangoes.
Dwindling rice plantations has troubled the Department
of Agriculture that Undersecretary Jesus Emmanuel Paras
aired the department’s concern in the Davao City leg of
the Philippine Economic Briefing held early this month
at the Marco Polo Hotel here.
“We are
very alarmed with the situation where our rice
production areas, including the irrigated lands, are
being converted to banana plantations,” he told the
participants to the briefing, organized by the economic
team of President Arroyo and the Bangko Sentral ng
Pilipinas.
The BAS
office here said the dwindling hectareage was mainly
ascribed to the conversion of crops to banana and
vegetable “where the return was more inviting and
tempting to resist,” William Barangan, Davao City
provincial agricultural statistics officer, told the
BusinessMirror.
A BAS
Rice and Corn Situation and Outlook for January 2008
said that the reduction of rice production in the
Davao region was 10.3 percent lower in 2007, the lowest in
the five-year period.
“The
output decline could be attributed to the 10.6-percent
contraction in harvest areas brought about by farmers
shifting their areas to banana, vegetables and other
crops,” the document said.
Davao
del Norte, for instance, where plantations of the more
than 30 banana companies are found, suffered the
steepest decline of its rice farmlands, from 54,910
hectares in 1994, to only 32,371 hectares in 2005.
The
neighboring
Compostela
Valley,
the northern neighbor of Davao del Norte, is the site of
the major expansion of banana companies, which still
continue to date.
Compostela
Valley
has since showed its strength in banana production,
topping the 1.15-million metric ton mark last year.
Davao del Norte was second at 1.13 million metric tons.
Rice
lands are expected to be under continued pressure as
banana demand would be increased with the addition of
powerhouse China and the Middle East coming in big
numbers. Davao’s production is being shipped to Japan,
South Korea and Hong Kong, the traditional market.
Barangan
also said farmers are shifting to other crops, besides
bananas.
“In
Tugbok and Calinan district in the city, and in Carmen
in Davao del Norte, farmers are also finding easy and
big income from raising hito [cat fish].”
He said
that the current crisis may have been due to the delayed
harvest of rice “because of what they call
photoperiodism,” or the lack of adequate sunlight the
past month as rain clouds hover and cover most of the
sun the whole month. Harvest is expected at the last
week of March up to the first week of April, and then
again in October.
“I hope
that this would only be about the lack of supply because
of the delayed harvest. Let’s just watch this April,” he
said.
Undersecretary Virgilio Leyretana of the Mindanao
Economic Council (Medco) told Monday’s regular press
conference of the Davao Press Club at SM City that
“there is no shortage in supply monitored here in
Mindanao.”
Leyretana said it was “the unscrupulous traders that we
are wary about who might take advantage of the increase
in the price of rice. Some traders might hoard rice so
it would fetch higher prices.”
He
declined to comment though, on the declining hectareage
of rice farmlands as possible cause of grain shortage.
“I do not want to speculate if it is caused by the
conversion of rice fields into plantations for cash
crops.”
But
Gomez, the cashier at a local chicken and seafood
restaurant, remains hopeful that rice prices would not
post undue increases.
“I hope
that this would not be true [that rice price could reach
P40].” Earning only P160 daily after deduction from
eating her lunch at the restaurant, “this P30-a-kilo
price is too much.”
“I hope
the media would show our leaders how we, the poor
people, are really suffering from it all,” she said. |
