Curb corruption and farmers will produce

ON DISTANT SHORE
By Val G. Abelgas

After boasting that the country will be self-sufficient in rice by 2013 and a rice exporter by 2014, it appears the Aquino administration is admitting failure and is giving up on these lofty goals.

Malacanang announced last week that it was shifting its focus from attaining rice self- sufficiency to the farming of alternative, high-value crops such as pineapple, bananas and dragon fruit, among others.

Communications Secretary Sonny Coloma said the country attained 97% self-sufficiency in rice in 2013 and is not really abandoning its rice sufficiency program. The Rice production increased 2.3 percent year-on-year to hit 18.44 million metric tons in 2013, on the back of strong harvests in the fourth quarter, the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics said last week.

If these figures were true, how come the country imported more than 705,000 metric tons as of end of November last year when the domestic demand for rice was estimated at only 11.23 million metric tons? Why do the prices of rice continue to rise despite the more than 7 million MT difference between supply and demand? Why does the National Food Authority continue to authorize rice importation if indeed local production had exceeded demand? Why do rice smugglers continue to operate if there were oversupply based on the 18.44 million MT local produce as against the estimated 11.23 million MT demand in 2013?

While producing high-value crops is good for exports, the country needs to continue attaining self-sufficiency in rice for the simple reason that it is the basic staple of Filipinos. By encouraging the shift to high-value crops, most of the rice farmers would abandon rice planting, resulting in a potential crisis that the government would find difficult to handle.

The shift to high-value crops was suggested as early as September 2011 by former NFA head Lito Banayo, who said the country cannot hope to attain self-sufficiency in rice because of certain factors. Among these factors, he said, are the fact that a huge part of the country’s terrain is mountainous, which is not conducive to rice farming; the lack of reliable irrigation, the frequent typhoons that destroy the staple crop, and the obvious indifference of government to agriculture.

Farmers’ group have opposed Banayo’s idea and are now protesting the government’s agriculture policy shift, saying it would result in heavy rice importation, spike in rice prices, and even more rampant rice smuggling.
“Don’t obey. Don’t listen to the dictate of a landlord president,” Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas national president Rafael Mariano told the movement’s over 1.3 million members in 65 provincial chapters and 15 regional chapters nationwide.

Quezon Rep. Aleta Suarez and Gabrila party-list Rep. Luz Ilagan said that a shift in the rice self-sufficiency policy would be counter-productive.

“They want to help the farmers in Vietnam while killing our farmers,” said Suarez, a member of the independent minority bloc in the House. She added that such a policy would not help farmers, and would not curb rice smuggling.

Ilagan called the shift “the most anti-farmer and pro-foreign trade policy.”

The shift in rice policy was an admission that the Aquino administration is “incapable of protecting the rights of our own people,” Ilagan said.

Abakada party-list representative Jonathan dela Cruz said that the shift in government’s policy on rice was “an admission of failure in the agriculture sector despite all the funds and incentives” provided for the local farmers.

Indeed, the policy shift is a capitulation by the government to capitalists, who are more interested in the profits that high-value crops could bring to them, rather than in the needs of the millions of Filipinos who are dependent on rice. While the export of these crops would enrich them, it would spell more difficulties for the impoverished people who will have to contend with much higher prices of rice, and for farmers who stand to lose their livelihoods.

I find the idea of abandoning the country’s goal of achieving self-sufficiency in rice both irresponsible and defeatist. Filipinos are a rice-eating people and with the population rising continuously, we just have to produce more rice. We cannot afford to be dependent on rice imports to provide the people’s need for this basic staple. It would be catastrophic if, for some reason, rice-exporting countries stopped selling rice to us.

Rice farming – and agriculture, for that matter – has not achieved the desired production output not much because of typhoons and mountainous terrains, as suggested by Banayo. Rice farmers are not getting enough support from the government. In fact, the NFA has been buying only 3% of the rice produced by local farmers and has instead bought rice from other rice-producing countries such as Vietnam and Thailand.

We all know that while the government has allotted billions of pesos to boost agriculture, most if not all of these funds went instead to the pockets of greedy politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen. If you look at the corruption scandals in the past administration, you will note that many of them were related to agriculture – the P728-million fertilizer fund scam, the P3.1-billion irrigation fund scandal, the P455-million ice making machine scam under the Department of Agriculture; the P5-billion swine scam; and the P120-million Ginintuang Masagani Ani (GMA) project scam. Even under the Aquino administration, it is always the funds of the NFA, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Agrarian Reforms that the scalawags in government and business are targeting.

Would it be any different if the farmers planted bananas and pineapples instead of rice? I don’t think so. It would only give new opportunities for kickbacks to those dirty politicians and businessmen.

Curb corruption and agriculture will flourish again.

(valabelgas@ao..com)