Tuesday, May 27, 2008 Tabije: Rice problem: What went wrong By Ismael Tabije Notions Plus
WHEN countries plan their food requirements, there are two terms commonly used: food security and food self-sufficiency. Some people think that these two terms are one and the same thing worded differently. Not really.
Self-sufficiency means being able to provide the country's food requirements thru domestic production. On the other hand, food security means being able to provide the country's food requirements by a wider range of sources -- domestic and/or international.
The second presupposes that even if a country has no natural resources for producing rice but if it has the money to buy it elsewhere, then it still has food security.
A while back, it was written in the national papers that the Irri head was attributing our current lack of rice to the lack of land for planting rice, among other reasons. I hope that he was misquoted or taken out of context because I largely disagree that it is the main cause of our current misery. A major cause is the lack of investments in irrigation for the last 20 years or so.
In the '70s up the '80s it was clear that the government's strategy was food self-sufficiency. It poured in huge amounts of money to build irrigation systems nationwide, among other major agriculture initiatives. The National Irrigation Agency (NIA) then was declared as the finest irrigation agency in Asia.
By the later years of the '80, however, government investments in irrigation started to significantly wane. Notwithstanding presidential announcements that irrigation remains in its priority, the annual budgets tell a different story -- up to now.
Now, there are very few major irrigation projects being implemented and many of the existing irrigation systems constructed in previous decades are in a sorry state of being dysfunctional due to lack of repair and maintenance funds of the NIA.
On average, a rain-fed land produces about 30-40 sacks of rice per hectare per harvest. That same land if irrigated will produce 70-80 sacks. Further, a rain-fed land produces rice only once a year, during the rainy season. An irrigated land produces harvest two times a year.
The net effect of the above analysis is that an irrigated land produces four times more rice per hectare per year as compared to rain-fed land.
The Philippines has a total rice area of about four million hectares. Out of this, about three million are potentially irrigable but only about one million are actually irrigated. Imagine there are two million hectares waiting to be made four times more productive.
It is clear that we don't have to take the fixed rice area of the country as the limiting factor for rice production. There is a huge potential for significantly increasing our country's rice production by building more irrigation systems alone. Improving farm systems and related programs will further make the lands more productive.
Current world events have shown that having money to buy rice from other countries cannot anymore guarantee food security. When there is a shortage of rice worldwide due to natural calamities, the rice producing countries will not export their rice-they will secure their internal food requirements.
It's about time the National Government puts its money where its mouth is and shift our country strategy to food self-sufficiency with the fierce urgency of now (if I may borrow the term of the late Dr. Martin Luther King).
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Answer to last Tuesday's puzzle: Because it is unlawful anywhere to be buried alive.
Today's teaser: Newspaper headline: "Airplane Crash!" Sub-title: "Every single person died, but two people survived." How was this possible? (Answer next Tuesday)
(Ismael D. Tabije is an International Consultant in Irrigation. He renders consultancy services to the WB, the UN and the EC. He used to work with the NIA from 1975 to 2000. Email feedback to idtabije@yahoo.com.)
