Tuesday, April 15, 2008 Croissants or jathropa for breakfast By George Aguilar Rational animal
WHY plant rice? The government subsidizes the planting of jatropha but not rice. Too bad we can't eat jathropa. Jathropa is a high value crop that benefits only those who have the capital to convert it to fuel. Whereas, the rich and famous also eat rice in the Philippines. So why doesn't the government subsidize rice production at all? Ask Arthur Yap and he probably won't have the answer himself. He, like his boss, belongs to the upper strata of Philippine society and does not really understand the plight of the poor.
It doesn't pay to be a farmer in the Philippines. Planting rice is never fun (as the song goes), it's a backbreaking work and it doesn't pay much. Farmers who toil most of the day don't even own the rice fields that they plant on. The little produce that they manage to harvest is bought by traders and sold for exorbitant profits. While the farmer and his family are mired in poverty, the traders grow rich especially in the midst of crises. To complicate the problem, the kinds of rice seeds sold to farmers these days are genetically modified. These GMO rice need specialized fertilizers and chemical pest killers that cost more. In short, rice cost more these days to produce and despite the scientific findings, there is actually little proof that modified rice has enhanced the living conditions of our peasants and small rice planters.
Ask any farmer about their future plans for their children. They will tell you that they want their children to have a high school or even a college education so they can leave the farm and go to the town and city to look for "real work" as sales ladies or even store clerks. Most likely they will end up as house help or even GROs in seedy bars. But the point is that not even the peasants want their children to become farmers. So who'll end up planting rice so that our people can continue to eat this staple crop? Farming has become some kind of a punishment for many Filipinos these days. We'll end up as a nation of mall employees or call center agents. But, again, who'll plant the rice? The government's answer, the Vietnamese of course. But even Vietnam is having trouble supplying rice to its own people. So there will come a time one day when our own people will have no more rice to eat. Our poor can't afford to eat croissants or muffins for breakfast.
This is something that our solons just don't get. They said that rioting over food is an alien concept in this country. Shall we, venerable solons, wait and see if it does? The problem with these solons is that they've never been hungry. They don't know that people get nasty and tempers flare when the stomach is empty.
The government is culpable for the real and imagined rice crisis. It has not done its work properly and has not put in any funds to ensure the sustainable rice production in our lands, except for the fertilizer scam wherein the money may have gone to vote buying rather than to crop production anyway. The endless need to keep the Arroyo administration afloat has run counter to the people's need for food and jobs. It has endangered the people's well being by pursuing unlimited trade liberalization and the regular importation of rice and other food into the land.
It is, unfortunately, beyond the Arroyo government to solve the rice crisis because it continues to insist on trade liberalization and the selling of territories and natural resources to the highest bidders. The government continues to rely on the use of GMO-laden formulas that come from the first world to solve the agricultural problems of this third world nation.
What they don't really understand is that it cost our farmers more to grow genetically modified rice. The government's latest move to lower rice tariffs to bring in more rice imports will compound the problems of our peasant farmers even more. Not only do they have to cope with higher cost of producing rice. They will have to compete with cheaper imported rice that is just there in the hidden and not so hidden warehouses of the rice hoarders, err I meant dealers. The policy of importing rice whenever shortages come, a thing that has been happening yearly for these past few years, will benefit only those who are already rich and well connected to the government. Our continuing dependence on rice importation will eventually kill the local rice industry. What will happen to our small farmers and peasants? Will the growing number of malls give them jobs then? The security guards won't even let them inside the plush malls, what more of jobs? When that day comes and our poor will have to buy the more expensive rice then we will see if the IMF prediction of food riots and wars cannot happen within the Philippine islands. Croissants anyone?
