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Rice,
being the staple food of most Filipinos, including those
who have migrated to other countries, is also a
political staple for people who believe rice can make or
unmake presidents.
It
unmade then-President Diosdado Macapagal, who made it a
Friday habit of rationing doggy bags of rice to anyone
who’d care to visit the President at the Palace and line
up every Poor Man’s Day to show his concern for the
hungry.
Nostalgic present-day historians and scribes of all
sorts are now pointing out that the same catastrophe may
happen to the President’s daughter, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo,
who, just last Friday, committed to release P43.7
billion to the agricultural sector to ensure an
abundant, affordable and stable food supply.
She was
not copying a similar directive issued by President
Macapagal in his last days in office, but an honest
desire to free the country from hunger despite a growth
rate last year that was unprecedented, at least in Asia.
Of the
amount, P15 billion will be lent to farmers, but how is
the question some people may raise given the tongpats
or kickbacks the
Philippines
is well known for.
About
P500 million will also be spent by the government for
fertilizer support and production, although the people
close to the Palace would rather forget the case of
Jocjoc Bolante, who is happily languishing in a United
States jail for still unclear reasons.
Being a
political staple, a bylined article of a certain Arturo
P. Garcia datelined March 29 said the Philippine Peasant
Support Network (Pesante)-USA, a Filipino farmers,
environment and human-rights advocacy group based in Los
Angeles, had expressed dismay over the US-Arroyo
regime’s way of solving the present rice crisis in the
former rice-producing nation that is the Philippines.
His
article said the Philippine government was going to buy
2 million metric tons (MMT) of rice abroad at a cost of
$600 or P24,600 a MT, and that would be P49.2 billion,
146 times greater than the Philippines’ annual
postharvest budget.
It seems
that Pesante is so politically concerned that despite
the claim that there is no rice crisis at the moment,
the government’s rice supply “will be imported—from of
all places—the United States and Vietnam.”
The
article went on to say that while the state-owned
National Food Authority (NFA) is supposed to buy palay
from the rice farmers at lower costs, corruption and
rice cartels have made eating a poor man’s staple a
dream.
Globally, about 560 MMT of rice are grown annually
compared with 600 MMT for wheat, 300 MMT for oil seeds
and 900 MMT for coarse grains (corn, sorghum, barley,
oats, rye, millet and mixed grains.)
Of the
560 MMT produced, almost 60 percent is grown and
consumed in China and India. The leading producers of
rice are (in this order) China, India, Indonesia,
Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Japan,
Philippines, Brazil and the United States, which
produces about 8 MMT, or about 1.5 percent of the
world’s supply.
Used to
be that the
Philippines
was the leader in Asia; now it’s the leader in importing
rice.
Planting
rice is never fun, really.
E-mail: raulbvalino@yahoo.com.ph |
