Thursday, April 03, 2008 Espinoza: Scarcity of rice By Elias L. Espinoza Free Zone
THE lightning raids on rice warehouses across the country indicates an impending rice shortage. The truth is, rice shortage is an international reality.
Vietnam, one of the world’s top rice producers and exporters, is drastically limiting its rice export because of the growing fear of scarcity and the rising price of rice.
It is, however, a great relief that Vietnam and Thailand will allow our country to draw from their emergency rice reserves as global stockpiles of rice dropped.
“The price of rice, a staple in the diets of nearly half the world's population, has almost doubled in international markets in the last three months,” said the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) report posted in its website.
Our country produces rice nearly double those of Thailand, the world’s top exporter, yet “there is just not enough land,” said Robert Zeigler, IRRI director general.
We have lost so much prime land and water supplies in the rush by the previous administration to industrialize, a shortsighted approach to improve our economy.
The current threat of rice shortage in the country has obliged the Arroyo administration to seriously run after rice hoarders. And the simultaneous inspections on rice warehouses all over the country are paying off.
Aside from the problem of hoarding, authorities discovered the long-time practice of some cheeky entrepreneurs of mixing rice from the National food Authority (NFA) with well-milled rice and selling these at the price set for well-milled rice.
Meanwhile, repacking NFA rice to a kilo per pack is another knee-jerk reaction to the situation by this administration. It can only add fire to the tension.
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What Senate witness Rodolfo Lozada Jr. failed to achieve in his visit here last month will be compensated for when he visits Dagupan City tomorrow
The archdiocese in Dagupan is preparing a red carpet welcome for Lozada, said a Philippine Daily Inquirer report.
Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz was quoted as saying, “the poor fellow was offended when he went to Cebu and I understand it was a Sunday and they could not even have a mass for Sunday, except at night yata. I’ll try to make up for that.”
Slighted by the lean crowd composed of students and professionals that met him during his visit here and claiming that not a single priest wanted to say mass for him, Lozada called the Cebu church an “Archdiocese of Malacañang.”
Because of his reckless and thoughtless statements, Lozada received flak from the Cebu media, politicians and concerned Cebuanos.
But while Archbishop Cruz may be entitled to his view, his sarcastic statements about Cebu does not speak well of the church where he belongs.
It only affirms what we knew all along: that there is a crack even in the Catholic Church hierarchy. As a matter of fact, Tarlac Bishop Florentino Cinense has issued a statement in support of President Arroyo finishing her term.
Bishop Cinense argued that it would be costly for the country if President Arroyo is removed. He said holding a snap election would be “an expensive affair.” He asked the President, though, to clean up her tarnished image.
There was nothing for Lozada’s organizers in Cebu to be embarrassed of considering that last month was graduation week, hence they could not be solely blamed for the lean crowd that attended the activities they organized.
