Wednesday, March 26, 2008 Barrita: Rice By Eddie O. Barrita Small Bites
GOVERNMENT officials have assured the people there is enough rice supply in the country, but the staple costs a little bit more.
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap blamed the price hike on the soaring oil prices in the world market.
His wise advice: save on rice.
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Saving on rice can be difficult.
Some didn’t realize many poor Filipinos subsist on rice and “target.”
No, it’s not the corned beef brand but a little bowl of salt which you “target” with your index finger to add taste to your rice.
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Majority of Cebuanos are known to prefer corn over rice that a student in Cabadiangan was supposed to have told a classmate, “In our house, our rice is corn.”
Some even believed it was corn that made the late Cebuano boxing great Gabriel “Flash” Elorde such a heavy slugger.
It was rather ironic a kind of bread, not a new corn variety, was named after him.
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Sen. Mar Roxas said the looming rice crisis can’t be solved by a food summit.
Maybe he was afraid the food will be on the summit, making it difficult for ordinary consumers to reach it.
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Sen. Loren Legarda has urged government to use two multi-billion-peso funds to increase rice production in a couple of years.
I can still recall Congress once allocated funds for irrigation projects in Metro Manila.
It would have become the first rice-growing metropolis.
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Many have wondered why the Philippines, which hosts the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) where students from other countries learn how to grow rice, is not self-sufficient in rice.
Maybe they found out it’s cheaper to buy rice from other countries than to grow it in the Philippines.
But what happens when these countries stop selling rice to us?
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Many young Filipinos have shied away from the back-breaking labor of planting rice in their farms and instead hie off to the cities to try their luck.
Aha, maybe it’s because in grade school, they were taught how to sing, “Planting rice is never fun/ Bend from morn till set of sun,/ Cannot stand, cannot sit,/ Cannot rest for a little bit.”
