Sunday, February 10, 2013

Solving the problem of rice shortage


Rod Kapunan
This column would not want to appear consistently negative in our view of the present dispensation.  There are times when we have to praise, and we refer to the distribution of 480 hectares of land to the farmers in Mulanay, Quezon, an area once considered rebel-infested.  The giving of certificates of land ownership award under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program is a small but right step towards fulfilling the goal of liberating our people from the dreary life of poverty.
The problem is, this lackadaisical government has yet to grasp the racio decidendi why the government has to distribute lands.  Maybe there is in it a vexing wisdom, but the farmers’ participation is the only way to allow them to elevate their standard of living.   At its core is the incentive to produce more food, and in its most noble sense contribute in making our country self-sufficient in food.   As one political analyst would put it, “a country that cannot feed its own people eventually losses its own freedom and independence.”
Except during the short interlude of the Marcos administration, almost all failed because the government could not focus on what it is supposed to do. It was doomed to failure because most of the infrastructure that was created and built that could have solidified the foundations of the program was dismantled.  PNoy forgot that the duty of the government does not end by its parting of those lands.  The beneficiaries are duty-bound to make them productive, otherwise the program is akin to abetting social parasites reselling their lands to buyers at higher prices to be converted for other purposes, or to abandoning them for lack of capital to make use of them.
Contrary to the view of one decrepit economist who consistently towed the line of free trade and deregulation, he suggests instead rice importation as substitute to shortage, and by deregulating the price to spur competition.  He then simplistically deduced that it would result in lower prices, omitting that historically the same idea resulted in famine and untold hunger to millions of people.
As in any business endeavor, all that one needs is to measure the aggregate cost of production, plus cost of labor including those who assisted in the planting and harvesting his crop.  If the net amount will consistently fall below production cost, then most likely the farmer will abandon his occupation and seek employment elsewhere.  This explains why many of them prefer to settle in the urban areas knowing that contractual workers earn more than what they do as farmers.
The five hectares for the irrigated and the seven for the unirrigated given to farmers under the Marcos program were not plucked out of the blue. These were figures intended to allow them to enjoy the comfort of an emancipated farmer who can look forward to seeing his children joining the ranks of the middle class of professionals.  But when the succeeding government modified the land area to three and five hectares, it was as if the government was treating them as gardeners.  Some suspect the decrease was goaded by envy to distribute as many titles in such a short span of time – not really a desire to accelerate food production.
The Marcos government had to provide the now-hated subsidy in  fertilizer, seedlings, irrigation; assurance to buy their harvest at a fairly high  and stable price despite surplus; constructed numerous buying stations and warehouses as food depots;  created farmers’ cooperative; and providing them with crop insurance.   Vital was the giving of authority to the then-National Grains Authority  to  exclusively to buy and sell rice and corn.  All that resulted in the demise of the syndicated rice cartel.
Notably, the giving of authority to farmers’ cooperatives to import rice in lieu of their failure to meet the targeted goal resulted in them selling their authority/certificate to the rice cartel many of whom are even engaged in the actual smuggling of rice.  In fact, the issuance of authority/certificate to farmers’ cooperatives to import rice is the same anomalous practice enunciated by the corrupt Arroyo government in her bid to please everybody.
According to Abono party-list chairman Rosendo So, the NFA is at present only buying three percent from the produce of our local famers or equivalent to 615,985 metric tons amounting to P10.9 billion.  This, despite the fact that rice harvest is expected to reach 20.4 million metric tons this year which would have an equivalent worth of P351 billion.  So appealed to the government to increase the NFA’s buying quote to 30 percent or roughly equivalent to P105.3 billion.
It is for this why many were not surprised why his man at the National Food Authority was implicated in rice smuggling. It was reported that NFA chief, Angelito “Lito” Banayo, favored a certain group of farmers cooperatives represented by its treasurer, Elizabeth Faustino, in the allocation of imported rice through their own dummies.  A serious allegation even cropped up implicating his friend Nixon Kua as doing the leg work.
According to Faustino, since they could not pay the service fees amounting to almost P60 million each, the money was supplied by Kua who promised her a 30-percent commission and P5 for the cooperatives for every sack of rice sold. There is even an insinuation that Kua’s murder was related to the rice smuggling mess for obviously it involved  a multi-million pesos bungled scheme.
This now gives us a true picture that the PNoy administration is not doing anything to avert a potentially dangerous crisis of rice shortage.  In fact, had the Senate pursued the investigation of the P500 million worth of smuggled Indian rice at Subic Free Port  where Banayo’s name was  repeatedly mentioned, the expose  could have turned out to be the greatest  corruption mess involving this government claiming to be incorruptible and highly principled.
rpkapunan@gmail.com

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