Thursday, March 27, 2008 Wenceslao: Money shortage By Bong O. Wenceslao Candid Thoughts
MAYBE my friend was right. The supposed rice crisis is as much about lack of money as it is about the rise in rice prices. Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap is also right: there’s no rice shortage. What he fails to mention is that there is money shortage, not only among daily wage earners but more so among the unemployed. Thus the rice crisis.
And it’s not only about rice. With the rise in prices of basic commodities, the crisis is in everything. I even have this confession: I am one of the millions of Filipinos trying to make both ends meet. Years ago, my salary was bigger than my family’s monthly expenses. Now it’s the reverse, and it’s not only because the family is growing.
But let’s talk rice. Or first, corn. I don’t know how much the city’s hinterlands have changed but in the ‘80s when I stayed there, corn was the in thing. I remember one man who was called “arte” by his relatives as he preferred to eat rice because corn made his stomach turn. The farmers ate corn because it was among their main produce.
After every harvest, faces of tillers would light up while they arrange in rows ears of corn inside small huts used as storerooms. Grains are dried, milled in stone grinders, the chaff separated from the corn grits and then cooked. In the hinterlands, fresh fish is not easily available so one eats corn with vegetables and dried fish or, at times, sardines.
By the way, there was a time when marijuana leaves replaced corn inside the huts-cum-storerooms in some barangays. That was when shabu was not yet the vogue. The farmers’ logic: you sell a big basket of produce and bring home only a small bag of supplies; you sell a small bag of marijuana and bring home a big basket of supplies.
What I am saying is that rice is mainly the staple for lowlanders. But even that could not take away the fact that farmers in this country are a neglected lot. And if this point is a no-brainer for even ordinary “analysts” how much more supposed economists like President Arroyo? So we go back to the main reason for our predicament: corruption.
I actually agree with the proponents of this thesis (I heard Senate President Manny Villar talk about corruption in the agriculture department). While corruption is not the sole problem, it is the main problem. So there. But after recognizing that, what next? The truth is, we have been going in circles for decades and don’t know how to break the vicious cycle.
