Friday, April 04, 2008 Editorial: Of rice hunters and rice hoarders
AN exciting drama is going on in our midst with key law enforcers seeking out hoarded cereal and its shrewd hoarders.
Our local dailies have been headlining the activities of the rice hunters in the past two days.
The cat and mouse game is on.
Indeed, ensuring ample supply of rice and corn for the country’s people is a challenge for the Arroyo administration.
The President must face the problem frontally and assure the people that her government can very well handle it.
Government’s role
But the reality is far from reassuring in the face of the scarcity of supply and rising prices of rice per kilo.
A report from Bohol said, for example, that rice farmers have been forced to eat sweet potatoes (camoteng bagon) as cereal substitute because of lack of government support.
This brings to the open the inability of government agencies to coordinate delivery of services to farmers, especially in financial aid.
Assistance
One fact frequently pointed out is that producing rice nowadays has grown expensive in recent years, and rice farming is no longer as attractive to the rice farmers.
To develop a hectare of rice land, a farmer needs to spend at least P18,745, broken down to P900 for the rice seeds, P6,000 for fertilizer, P4,900 for urea, P30 for hauling of fertilizer, P500 for pesticide and P6,415 for labor.
Thus, it is important that President Arroyo put in place a system of technical and financial assistance to cereal farmers, like the government aid extended to them during the martial law years under the Masagana 99 and Masagana Maisan.
At no other time in our recent history has the Philippines been able to export rice than under Masagana 99.
But at what cost to the tax payers?
Losing end
The present national dilemma is a product of a government that is dragging its feet in extending agricultural services to the farmers and of the absence of political will of a national leadership that is more focused on political power plays.
Truth is, even in the enforcement of laws on rice smuggling, hoarding and distribution the public is at the “losing” end.
They fall subject to the manipulations of rice hoarders and cartels backed by shrewd government leaders, powerful politicians and big cereal brokers.
