FILIPINO FOCUS

Vol. XVI × No. 11

DECEMBER 2004

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National Obsession?

by Oscar Gomez Jr.

RICE PLAYS CENTRAL ROLE IN PHILIPPINES

Few were surprised to learn it was the Philippines which led a successful 44-nation lobby in the United Nations to declare 2004 as the International Year of Rice (IYR). Rice after all occupies a critically important place in Philippine society.

The IYR’s effort to highlight rice and its political, economic, social, technical and environmental implications will find the Philippines to be a rich case study.

Irreplaceable
 

Rice is, to begin with, the irreplaceable food item on every Filipino table. “Many eat as much as 214 kilograms of rice each year (more than half a kilogram a day), providing them with up to 76 percent of their daily calories,” says Dr. Glenn B. Gregorio, a Filipino rice plant breeder. In the same breath, the good doctor admits how this belly-filling starch is “rather empty, nutritionally speaking.”

Rice provides the livelihood of 2.5 million farmers, and millions more drying machine operators, millers, buyers or middlemen, importers, wholesalers, vendors and peddlers. It is the main engine of a huge agriculture sector. According to the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics, the rice trade injects P200 billion worth of products and services into the local economy, contributing 3.5 percent of the country’s domestic output.

Poverty cycle

It however also breeds a cycle of countryside poverty—as it moves through a complicated supply chain where price doubles literally from the farm to the wholesaler. Too many farmers remain ill-equipped to improve yields or are debt-ridden from past crop failures. They are therefore vulnerable to price exploitation by cunning middlemen and financiers. The government tries to lift their predicament by outbidding middlemen through direct buying, or by teaching farmer groups to handle wholesale-level marketing themselves.

Politicians aren’t any less perceptive of its impact. They would stuff a kilogram of rice each inside thin plastic bags for doling out, along with a can of fish, in vote-heavy poor communities. Over the years, senior government leaders have played on the nation’s rice obsession, as well, through sweeping pledges to restore the Philippines to its proud days as a rice exporter. 

Inefficiencies

But imports will remain for as long as production inefficiencies persist. For instance, inadequate farm-to-market roads, drying and milling facilities, and storage infrastructure have caused post-harvest losses of up to 30 percent. These inefficiencies partly explain the numerous intermediaries that prey upon the supply and distribution chain and eventually drive up retail prices.

“Despite playing a key role in Asia’s Green Revolution, the Philippines may never attain rice sufficiency and could be better off importing cereals,” said David Dawe, an American economist assigned to the Philippine-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Dawe thinks “the Philippines would be slightly richer if it didn’t focus on self-sufficiency.” He cited areas such as Bangladesh, Thailand, and Vietnam as having major river systems and rainfall patterns that were better suited for rice production.

Despite rising prices in the world market, rice has remained largely affordable since the Philippine government aggressively builds buffer stock to stabilize local prices, especially during lean production months. The strategy is intended for food security and improved farm revenues. Importation is also triggered whenever unpredictable weather causes local shortfalls.

One creeping problem is the trend to give up irrigated farmlands for residential, commercial and industrial uses. The incentive is more rewarding to farmers who sell their land for millions instead of tilling them to make a few thousand pesos every season. Untold billions of pesos have been sunk into a land redistribution program for two generations, but small farmers have yet to dramatically improve their lot.

Self-reliant

In the meantime, to convince them to continue planting, government agriculture chief Luis Lorenzo has been promoting biotechnology through the Hybrid Rice Commercialization Program (HRCP). In the next two years, the Philippines is hoping to become fully self-reliant in rice because of massive planting of hybrid varieties. The Philippines has targeted full internal sufficiency by 2004-2005. That will require harvesting over 15 million metric tons, equivalent to about 302 million bags of milled rice. Higher production in 2002 made the country 93% self-sufficient.

Lorenzo is selling hybrid, disease-resistant rice as the solution to a growing population and shrinking farmlands. Many farmers have confirmed doubling their harvest per hectare to about 8.6 metric tons—far above the 3.3 metric-ton national average—since shifting to hybrid rice. Record harvests have naturally boosted incomes, too.

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