ILOILO HAS BEEN known as the “Food Basket and Rice Granary of the Philippines.” We wonder if we still are because now, we see many of our people consuming National Food Authority (NFA) rice. About 50 percent of more than 4,700 square kilometers of our land is devoted to agriculture, with rice as its main product.

We have 204,385 hectares in Iloilo devoted to rice farming, of which 106,934 hectares are irrigated and 97,451 hectares rain-fed. There are 146,187 farmers engaged in rice production.

The government recently announced that it is importing 2.2 million tons of rice for this year to meet an impending shortage of the cereal. At $700 per ton, this means an outlay of $1.6 billion in one year. Our country has now become one of the world’s biggest importers of rice!

Imagine, once upon a time, Vietnamese and Thais were only being taught by us how to plant rice, with many of them having come here to the Philippines to study rice culture. We are good teachers. Now we buy rice from our former students.

In the light of these developments, we Ilonggos should stop whatever we are doing, especially the bickering and infighting among our local government officials who act more like politicians rather than public servants, which they promised to be before they were elected.

We think we should all re-direct our efforts to planting rice and regain that old title of being the “Food Basket and Rice Granary of the Philippines,” of which our province has been known. Then we can save the country from this impending rice shortage. Probably, it would require a review of our present agricultural priorities and strategies.

By the way, in our recent visit to Makati, we met three Ilonggo businessmen having lunch at the latest Mang Inasal outlet at the corner of Makati Avenue and Jupiter Street in Bel-Air Village, one of them a top leader of the Iloilo Rural Bankers group. We think that they are there for the “pabusog-busog” meals that Mang Inasal offers notwithstanding the alleged rice shortage!

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