Population explodes; food program falters ... so what's next?

by ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ

SHORTLY after noon yesterday while chasing a story, I happened to drop by the shanty of Diksen, my Papua New Guinean contact, in a depressed suburb of Port Moresby.

Waiting for him to wind up with what he was doing, I went around his small shack sitting on a hillside some 50 meters away from the road to have a look. Immediately, I noticed the "dirty kitchen" made of an overturned metal box with two iron rod fixed parallel to each other along the width of its open top side. Sitting on it was a covered, dented and blackened aluminum "caserola".
The stove was unfired.

When Diksen finally came up, I asked him: "How come your kitchen is cool ... nobody cooked lunch ...?"

And he answered: "You know my friend, we don't cook lunch ... only breakfast and supper ... otherwise, (the) rice won't last long ... sometime, we only have tea for breakfast and some rice and sweet potato or yam for supper ..."

Diksen and his wife have seven children to feed - three jobless adults and four young ones who don't attend school. And he has no regular source of income, other than selling betel nuts by the roadside near his house and peddling kerosene in soft drink bottles around the neighborhood. The wife, on occasions, works as "haus meri" (housemaid) for some expatriate families and is paid at least 20 kina (US$7) a week. Her wage could only buy 8 kilos of cheap rice which they make it last for at least a week, if they cook twice a day only. (Minimum wage in PNG is less than one kina (PHP14/US$0.35.) In between breakfast and supper, they would chew betel nuts to keep their jaws and tummy busy.

"Food is so expensive nowadays ... including rice ... we can only afford to buy a small amount every time ..." said Dickson, who had his last permanent employment with the government's Works Department two years ago, doing non-skilled job.

"I wish I could find a better paying job so we could buy enough rice always ..." he said.

Papua New Guinea, a traditional root crop consumer, currently buys rice from Thailand and Vietnam, just like the Philippines.

And this makes Dikson's story ring a bell.

His family's cutting back on rice consumption, interestingly, is a version on a grand scale of what Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap wanted the Filipinos to do: Cut down on rice intake, especially when eating out, so that the country's current grain stocks would last till the next regular imports from Thailand and Vietnam arrive.

Yap justified this, saying that rice served at fast-food restaurants is usually not consumed in full. In most cases, half of the serving is left on the plate by the diner. So they should request the food server to give them only half of the usual heap being served. On a national scale, the wasted rice, says Yap, amounts to 25,000 of sacks everyday (1,250 tons), or 37,500 tons every 30 days. If this cutback is observed, restaurants and fast-food chains would be reducing their rice buying, thus stretching what is available in rice warehouses across the country for a longer period until the next shipment arrives. End result is no rice shortage.

The country's population is nearing the 90 million mark. Every day, the people consume about 33,000 metric tons, for a total of 990,000 metric tons every 30 days, or 11.9 million MT every 12 months. To keep up with the stocks and avoid possible riot in the streets arising from grain shortage, the Arroyo government has to continue pleading with rice suppliers Thailand and Vietnam to set aside enough for the its people. Just recently, it succeeded somehow when it managed to get 335,500 tons of rice from these rice exporting countries, just enough to feed the nation for 10 days. A rough estimate would show that we have to import this much rice every 10 days until the next crop is harvested.

One reason for the looming grain shortage is the failure of the government's hybrid rice program to produce from last year's crop the targeted output of at least 16.3 million metric tons of palay to beef up the country's food security plan this year. Converted into milled rice, this should have been at least 11.4 million MT which could fill 97 per cent of our yearly rice needs, a bold projection made last year by Executive Director Frisco Malabanan who overseas the Ginintuang Masagang Ani (GMA) under the Department of Agriculture.

But DA's projection, which was glowingly hyped in the media, was miserably off, the main reason we are scrambling to import at least 2 million MT this year.

Launched in 2002, hybrid seeds were tinkered with to yield 6.5 metric tons per hectare against the usual certified seeds that produce only four and a half metric tons. While it was true that farmers increased their output to at least 6 tons per hectare, many of the 73,184 farmers who earlier participated dropped out along the way.

They found out to their dismay that as they went along with planting hybrid rice and spending much more on organic and inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, their net income per hectare managed to increase only by about P1,000 per hectare. Studies conducted two years after the program was launched showed that the farmer gets a new income of P12,285 per hectare from cultivating hybrid rice as against P11,356/ha net profit from inbred rice farming. For the farmers, a P1,000-increment per hectare is too small for too much trouble.

And there were other discouraging prospects pestering the hybrid program like the assurance of demand for the costly hybrid seed, high cost and risk of producing hybrid seeds, the lack of improved-post harvest facilities, weak extension and monitoring services and budgetary constraints on the part of the government which proved loud only in pronouncements but lacking in actual funding.

But apparently, President Grloria Macapagal-Arroyo wanted to rescue this program that bears her notorious initials "GMA" or "Ginintuang Masaganing Ani" from total collapse and thus avert more future problems in producing the grain for the country's growing population.

A few days ago, she injected P1.5 billion into the country's rice production in the face of an "unprecedented" supply problem on the country's staple food, a clear admission that the heavily betted on rice program turned out to be a big loser.

Yap has said the boosted plan called for the planting of an additional 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of rice during the rainy season in the country's top 10 poorest provinces, and another 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) in other provinces. This should produce a combined harvest of 6.6 million MT of paddy rice, or 4.62 million MT of milled rice (at 70 per cent milling recovery). Harvests expected in the months ahead also would beef up supplies, obviously the imported ones.

WITH THE NATION having difficulty in meeting the food needs of its fast-expanding population, the thorny issue of population control, or to be exact, population management, has again come to the fore.

The number of Filipinos is growing at the rate of three live births every minute but the government could barely provide for the people's needs in terms of sustainable economic activities like job creation, food production, alongside the delivery of basic healthcare, basic education and community security to make life a little better.

The question that comes to mind: Is the Philippines really overly populated at its present number of 88 to 90 million that the country's food output is just barely meeting the people's daily food requirements? Or there is just a sheer lack of much-needed economic development especially in countryside, particularly honest-to-goodness food production activities and other job generation programs that could help and sustain 60 per cent of the people economically?

There are countries with land mass smaller than ours, like Japan, Vietnam and Thailand, with much bigger population. However, they succeeded in feeding for the people because of their successful sustainable food program. Based in the rural areas, these economic endeavors have generated ample jobs for the rural Japanese, Vietnamese and Thai people which provided more than enough for them, making them well enough and safely enough above poverty.

This is one scenario that was painfully lacking in our beloved country under previous governments. And even under the Arroyo regime, the number of hand-to mouth Filipino families continues to grow.

Our country has enough land to accommodate all the people it will produce in future. We also have enough land suitable for job creation activities. One problem that saddles us today is that a big portion of our land has been left unproductive ever since. Economically and sustainably developed rural land would encourage the people to stay put and pursue income-generating activities like rice farming and other food production activities from growing veggies and orchards, raising livestock and poultry and even doing handicraft on the side.

The absence of these income-generating jobs in the countryside is the main reason thousands would opt to migrate to the urban centers and cities each year where any form of jobs could be obtained. Over the last fifty years, migration towards towns and cities have remained unabated and this is something happening every day especially in Metro Manila.

If only the government could sustain the economic development program it has promised the people over the years, especially in the rural areas, the people would have sustainable jobs and those farmers who are into rice production would be able to continuously producing rice to help feed a growing nation.

But sad to say, much of the nation's revenues that could have sufficiently funded such programs are wasted through corruption. We have read in the news of late how government cronies are able to siphon off development money that could have been poured into projects that would boost development in rural areas.

And Arroyo can't decide on what policy to take to tackle the issue on population explosion. Obviously, she doesn't want to antagonize the Church which helps her during election time. On the other hand, the Church has been adamant in maintaining that any methods that curtail life are against its doctrine, and these include abortion, contraceptives, artificial birth control and the likes. It continuously flexes its divine muscles to foil any attempt in Congress to pass a law that promotes birth control.

Of course, Arroyo is a staunch advocate against artificial contraception. Because of this, her government has left the issue on so called birth control, population control, or population management, with the local government units led by provincial governments. Right now, provincial governments are running their own population control program carried out with municipal governments, with funding from the government and overseas donors, especially the US-backed population control agencies in the UN. Incidentally, there are pending bills in congress on how to go about slowing population growth from 2.3 to 1.9 percent yearly - translation: two kids each for new couples. And the Church is closely monitoring this, ready to spring.

At 88 million, I don't think we are over populated, thus there's no need to stop families from producing the children they wanted to have. We have enough space for every one, if the population is properly distributed according to the people's ability to work under an ongoing government-backed livelihood projects or private enterprise. The money the government pours into population management especially in importing family planning commodities estimated at US$2 million a year from last year to 2010 could be better spent on better health services that should reach bigger number of people, especially in urban and rural areas. This way, their health and well-being is amply served, boosting their capacity to contribute effectively to economic development.

One fierce resistance against population control -- Olongapo City's Councilor JC de los Reyes -- issued a very timely and valid warning. In a letter read in open session of the city council on August 1, 2007 opposing the Reproductive Health Code of Olongapo city, Reyes declared:

"Population control is the wrong solution of the wrong problem. The social problem of our nation is not over-population but massive enslaving poverty.

"Philippine poverty cannot be the result of a growing population, but rather the outcome of corruption in both government and business sectors. Both government and business conspire to put half of the national wealth and income in the hands of less than 1% of the population.

" We are poor not because we are many, but because only a few wittingly or unwittingly deprive our kababayans of opportunities to prosper... Contrary to what many say, our country is not overpopulated. Rather, the national problem has always been the concentration of wealth and opportunity in major urban centers, such as Manila, Baguio, Angeles, Davao, Cebu,...Olongapo? This condition gives rise to congestion, lack of resources and crime.

"Our country has already reached the point of "demographic transition" when the rate of growth reverses to a gradual decline. Furthermore, a definitive study of the Population Council in New York as early as 1982 concludes that the greatest factor influencing fertility decline is not a government-managed population control program. Between 35% and 45% of fertility decline is attributable to modernization, or the attainment of higher levels of human welfare and quality of life.

"Approximately 25 to 35% of fertility decline is induced by the simple factor of delaying the age at marriage, and 15 to 25% by the simple recourse of breast-feeding. None of these factors intrude into the health of people or violate the sacredness of life. Only between 2% and 5% of fertility decline is attributable to "managed population control."

Then, backed up by statistics, De los Reyes pointed out that the population control policy embodied in the ordinance is totally unnecessary because: "The Philippines' annual population growth rate is not, as many claim, 2.36% but between 1.61% (United Nations, 2003) and 1.99% (Philippine National Statistics Office, 2004).

"The total fertility rate, or the average number of children per woman of reproductive age in her lifetime, is not 3.22; within 10 years, this rate will, on its own momentum, decrease to 2.15 (United Nations Population Division, March 12, 2005). By then, the Philippine population will begin to decline in absolute numbers, as fewer births replace the number of deaths annually."

"Besides its flaw of not significantly contributing to the alleviation of poverty, artificial birth control is highly expensive: their financial costs are recurrent and expanding due to complications; their chemical side effects, such as physical illness and emotional depression, are injurious to the health of women; and their moral consequences are damaging- particularly the sexual promiscuity bred by what their advocates falsely call "safe sex."

"In fact, there is a case in the United States where due to a vasectomy after which a wife still got pregnant, the husband sued the doctor for medical malpractice, whose defense was that the child is from another man - where another issue arose -- adultery."

WE used to be a rice exporting country, which means that producing enough rice and at the same time feeding adequately our people who continuously grow in big number yearly is not impossible. What the government has to do is to be honest with the money it intends to spend on food production and rural development programs so that real development could take place. Otherwise, 60 per cent of the masses will stay mired in poverty with half of them below poverty line while they multiply by leaps and bounds, putting much strains on the perennial limited supply of food and other government resources.

As of now, the nation's immediate concern is on having enough rice so those who can buy would have something for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Those who can barely afford to buy enough rice would have to tighten up their belt some more while trying to increase family income with whatever means available. But we know they will always find a way to survive as they did over the years.

But this is not the life we want to see every day especially in rural areas and squatter districts across the nation because it is cruel. And it is inhuman.

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Email the writer:

jarahdz500@online.net.pg

alfredophernandez@thenational.com.pg

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(This article is also posted at www.PerryScope.org)