THE RICE CRISIS highlights a very serious and lamentable problem. And this is that the Filipino farmer remains among the most exploited member of society, despite decades of reform, including land distribution.

Indeed, the rice crisis explains why the country’s poverty level has been rising despite the much-ballyhooed 7.3-percent growth in the gross domestic product for 2007. That’s because more than half of our people, or 55 percent, are still dependent on agriculture for their subsistence. If you don’t help agriculture, in effect, you are not helping 55 percent of the population, and only the remaining 45 percent receives assistance to improve their lives.

This is very poor policy. Just look at what happened to the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act, or Afma. It was enacted in 1997 and should have modernized these sectors, ensured efficient food production and raised the standard of living of farmers and fishermen, and yet they still remain the poorest of the poor.

Congress should provide in Afma an average of P17 billion yearly for agriculture and fisheries modernization. But actually, the government had only spent an average of P14.6 billion annually for the period 2000 to 2007. Afma appropriations reached P23.3 billion in 2008, mainly due to congressional prodding.

The Afma funding was meant to be in addition to existing expenditures geared toward the agriculture and fisheries sectors. Instead, the government lumped together all agriculture-oriented activities, from the budgetary appropriation to the loans granted by the Land Bank of the Philippines and then counted them as compliance with the Afma spending level.

To make matters worse, agriculture has been a favorite victim of corrupt officials. We all know about the losses from fertilizer funds, and we hear of many anomalies in the construction of irrigation facilities and even in the distribution of seeds. As a result, only a small portion of taxpayers’ money intended for farmers actually reached them.

In addition, farming in the Philippines is a very risky and expensive business, and not only because it is dependent on the weather. Many farmers are reluctant to plant because of the continuing increases in prices of inputs like fertilizers and pesticides. The increases in prices of rice do not benefit those who plant and cultivate them—the profits go somewhere else.

And, because of the lack of warehousing facilities, farmers have to sell their harvested crops at low prices. The buyers—who have warehouses and store the grain until prices go up—reap the windfall. The high price of rice now, ranging from P30 to more than P40 a kilo, does not mean anything to the farmers.

And the farmers not only have to contend with the rice cartel, they also have to borrow money to buy fertilizers and pesticides, often with the projected harvest as collateral. Thus, their crops are already pawned to lenders long before harvest time. They are left with virtually nothing.

And that’s why we have a rice crisis now!

For me, the first step in raising the standard of living of farmers—and solving the rice problem—should begin by looking at agriculture and its importance from the point of view of the number of people that benefit from it, rather than its contribution to gross domestic product, which is low compared with industries and services.

Consider this: we lose about 15 percent or 1.5 million tons of rice every year from harvest time up to the time rice reaches the consumers, mainly because of the lack of warehousing facilities. That 15 percent would have been enough to cover our importation. We would not have been worried about the crop problem in Vietnam, and we would not have been forced to look to other countries to buy rice, if we were really serious about helping our farmers.

The distribution of rice bags and household goods may earn some pogi points. Many of our people are really going hungry. The other measures that are being implemented to cope with the rice shortage are laudable, but sadly, they are just another example of a reaction policy, instead of implementing programs that have long been put in place to prevent our present problem.

Remember this well: we will always have a food problem for as long as we fail to really emancipate the farmers who till our soil.

One Response to “Beyond the rice crisis”

• 1
  lito aguda
  August 20th, 2008 06:18

  join me and see for yourself what i am doing in sorsogon and albay help me implement helping our farmers. thanks and be serious about helping.

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