Wednesday, March 26, 2008 Zayco calls on public to limit rice wastage By Gil Alfredo B. Severino
AMID warnings of an impending rice shortage, Negros Occidental Governor Isidro Zayco has called everyone's attention to minimize rice wastage as reported by the National Food Authority (NFA).
In his regular press conference at the Capitol media center, Zayco quoted a study that every Filipino in a household is wasting one spoonful of rice. "If translated into a national figure, this amounts to millions of peso worth of rice, thus increasing our import dependency all the more."
Zayco called on the media to help disseminate the information on the Department of Agriculture and the NFA rice conservation program, which is a nationwide advocacy campaign, aimed at teaching every Filipinos the value of rice conservation.
Citing studies by the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) and the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), Zayco said that with proper education, the country saves at least 25,000 sacks of rice worth P22 million.
"All these coming from just one spoonful of rice wastage. How much more if the wastage is coming from the storage to the market area? This could double," the governor said.
A related study also by the BAS-FNRI showed that conserving rice would lessen the government's rice importation to 1.17 metric tons from past year's 1.87
metric tons.
The total daily rice wastage, if conserved, would feed some 3.4 million people and save them from going hungry, the BAS-FNRI study revealed.
In a phone interview Negros Bureau of Agricultural Statistics director Joely Cabarles stressed that while he can only speak for Negros Occidental, he assured that the situation in the province is not critical yet.
"Our main concern is that we are not a rice producing province, therefore our sufficiency is dependent upon other provinces which may be experiencing shortages owing to dry weather condition," Cabarles said.
"The dry summer season usually slows our productivity and it is not surprising that these problems are surfacing," Cabarles explained. "There are no reported shortages yet in a sense that when a buyer needs four kilos, he is only given two kilos. We are not in this situation yet."
