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I really
hope and pray I’m wrong. But there are signs popping up
everywhere that don’t look good as far as the country’s
rice situation is concerned.
The
signs are blaring and flashing a warning—like red-alert
sirens and lights in a nuclear facility—that the country
may be in for a rice crisis the likes of which we
haven’t seen for quite a while.
The rice
crisis that I think is forthcoming (again, I hope I’m
wrong) promises to be much bigger than the one that only
recently hit the country.
Just say
this is an educated guess. This is based on developments
affecting the rice industry over the past three months,
the latest of which was the destruction of wide swathes
across the country of harvestable palay crops by Typhoon
Frank just a few days ago.
The
government may try to play down the typhoon damage, but
even the traders and farmers in the rain-fed areas
(where only one crop a year is possible) fear the worst
for this year. Most farms are already at least two
months behind their planting schedules because not
enough rains have come their way.
In the
irrigated areas, planting is delayed because of a lack
of fertilizer or some other essential input.
It’s
ironic that in the rain-fed northern reaches of Luzon,
Frank brought a surplus of strong winds, but not enough
rains.
In the
lusher northern provinces of Isabela and Cagayan,
according to a regional official of the Department of
Agriculture, the problem is not water but inputs. What’s
amazing is that there seems to be no sense of urgency on
the part of regional officials in addressing such basic
problems. There is no feverish effort to catch up on
lagging production levels.
In
several parts of Southern Tagalog and the Bicol region,
rice farmers go about their chores “like zombies,”
obviously traumatized. Their farms, after all, have been
ravaged by a series of floods and other calamities this
year.
Iloilo, known as
one of the granaries of Western Visayas, was hit the
hardest by Typhoon Frank. It will probably take months
before it can reassume its role as a major rice supplier
of the region.
In other
parts of the country (notably Samar, Aklan, Antique,
Mindoro, Romblon and the war-ravaged provinces of
Mindanao) rice farmers are no longer dreaming of bumper
harvests this year. In flood-ravaged Aklan, rice was
retailing at more than P100 per kilo as of yesterday.
That,
more or less, is the production picture. Harvest figures
are generally on the decline. Traditionally, the
government has filled any shortfall in local rice
production with the corresponding imports from other
countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, India and
the United States. But earlier this year, the price of
rice in the world market soared to all-time highs of
more than a thousand dollars per ton, making it much
more prohibitive. The Philippines was (and still is) in
the market for 2.4 million metric tons (MT), but was
able to procure less than 1.5 million MT.
President Arroyo, however, was able to get additional
commitments from the governments of Vietnam and the
United States, but the Philippines has a long way to go
to fill its urgent import requirement.
Rice
prices in the world soared after the usual exporters had
cut back on their exports to meet their own surging
domestic requirements.
The
Philippines, incidentally, has the dubious distinction
of being the world’s biggest rice importer this year.
My guess
is that come September, unless by some miracle the
government can bring in all the rice that we need, we
will be in one hell of a fix.
Omerta_bdc@yahoo.com. |
