Tuesday, March 25, 2008 Editorial: Threat of rice shortage
DISTURBING reports in the past number of days have it that our republic is facing a serious rice shortage, probably much worse than this country has ever faced before. While President Arroyo had immediately taken cognizance of the emerging problem, it however took on the usual passion of a political issue. Thus, as it is with national issues where politics gets involved, the rice crisis is now said to be “politically explosive.”
The assessment came about when it was noted that the price of rice rose to a scary “new 34-year high.” Although the Philippines is a country recognized as a land with extensive arable areas conducive to rice and corn crops, it has never been able to produce enough to feed the growing millions of Filipinos. Thus, any surge in rice prices “is bound to spur social unrest and political instability.”
Political regimes rose and fell on the issue of rice. In the 1960s, during the regime of President Diosdado Macapagal, father of our incumbent President, people were lining up for their rice rations all over the archipelago. The government had to set up the National Rice and Corn Corp. (Naric) whose main function was to buy and sell rice and corn to the people at a price within the reach of the low income citizenry.
The Philippines, considered one of the world’s biggest rice importers, has been importing rice annually from other Asian countries for more than half a century now. Recently, it imported rice from the world’s top supplier, Thailand and Vietnam, at $708 per metric ton or about P30 per kilo, “up nearly 50 percent” from the price the government paid for its importation last January.
Consequently, looming now above the national broadband scam is the far graver and more serious threat of rice shortage. Against the backdrop of a food crisis, all else become minutiae in the imperative need to contain possible hunger among the people.
The threat of the cereal shortage has extended one more opportunity to the President’s political detractors and critics to launch another attack on her administration. GMA, however, has approved a proposal to increase the budget for rice production. One reportedly calls for the planting of “600,000 hectares of rice during the rainy season in the country’s 10 poorest provinces, 500,000 hectares in other provinces.”
