Sunday, March 23, 2008 Cabaero: Missing ingredient in rice status By Nini B. Cabaero Beyond 30
THE decision to import rice, to set aside funds for production and to field rice marshals to check on the market are predictable responses of government to the country’s rice problem.
Predictable because a rice shortage had hit the country in the past and the government’s responses then have been the same: import, fund more research, and activate the “rice police.” The missing ingredient in the responses, so far, is a dash of creativity in seeking solutions.
In 2004, the United Nations devoted the whole year to a commodity. “Compelling factors lie under this decision: the specter of increased hunger, malnutrition, poverty and conflict in the coming decades,” according to the International Year of Rice 2004 website found in http://www.fao.org/rice2004/.
These factors moved the Philippines and 43 other countries to formally request that the United Nations General Assembly declare 2004 the International Year of Rice. Several institutions joined in the project together with the Food and Agriculture Organization.
The main finding of the organizers was that there was need to increase rice production through a “more efficient use of water and land resources,” the website report said. It called for collaboration between government and civil society to help developing countries grow more rice with fewer resources.
How the Philippines fared after 2004 in the implementation of measures agreed on and the learning from the celebration is a question yet with no answer.
The knee-jerk manner by which the Department of Agriculture said there is need to conserve rice because the country’s stocks are running low and the quick denial by Malacañang of reports of a looming rice shortage only highlighted the fact that the country’s staple food can have political implications.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo immediately ordered the release of P3.35 billion for emergency measures, a Malacañang press statement said. Rice will be imported from Thailand to answer the demand here. The National Food Authority, the agency tasked to look into the country’s food security, will be fielding so-called rice marshals to go after hoarders who would take advantage of the tightening rice supply.
The President assured there will be rice but its price is bound to go up because of the limited supply.
These are the same measures adopted years earlier when, in 2004, the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, Laguna, warned of a time when Asian countries would suffer a rice shortage because of growing population. The Institute said factors that threatened rice supply are water shortage, global warming, a shortage of rice farmers and decrease in rice lands.
These factors cannot be adequately addressed by importing Thai rice, fielding marshals and setting aside more money for long-term solutions. We need more than those predictable, short-term responses from government.
