The recent distribution of the 2016 Rice Achievers Award came at a time of intense debate over whether the government’s rice policy should be aimed at self-sufficiency rather than security. As their advocacy suggests, the self-sufficiency folk believe that this country is capable of competitively producing its entire rice requirement; on the other hand, those who are pushing for rice security argue that the Philippines should leave rice production to countries that can produce the staple more efficiently and should, instead, aim toward ensuring that this country always has a sufficient supply of rice.
The Rice Achievers Awards are given to provinces. Five of the seven top producers in 2016 are located in Luzon: they are Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, Pangasinan and La Union. The remaining provinces are in Mindanao – Lanao del Norte and Compostela Valley. Last year was the fourth successive year in which Bulacan was a top-seven producer.
The recipients of the 2016 Rice Achievers Awards have one thing in common. Their rice farms have an ample supply of water for irrigation. Northwestern Luzon (La Union, Pangasinan) have rivers that flow down from the Cordillera range. Northeastern Luzon has the mighty Cagayan River. And Central Luzon, in which Bulacan is located, has the Pampaga River. Central Mindanao and Eastern Mindanao (Lanao del Norte and Compostela Valley) have two of this country’s longest rivers – the Rio Grande de Mindanao and the Agus – flowing through them.
The award-winning provinces of 2016 are by no means this country’s only big rice producers. There are many others.
In the Southern Tagalog region (Region IV-A and the eastern part of Mimaropa) there are the Mindoro provinces, Laguna and Quezon. The provinces through which the Bicol River flows, particularly Camarines Sur, likewise are big rice producers.
Iloilo is one of the nation’s biggest rice producers, thanks in large part to the Jalaur River. Indeed, Iloilo probably produces enough rice to feed the entire island of Panay.
The island of Leyte, also, produces plenty of rice – enough to feed its component provinces as well as the provinces of Samar.
As already indicated, Mindanao, with two of this country’s longest rivers, is a very well-watered island and therefore can feed the provinces of the four regions into which it is divided (Regions IX to XII and the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao). Lanao del Norte and Compostella Valley are just two of Mindanao’s big rice producers. The nation’s second largest island is one big breadbasket.
In accepting the Rice Achievers Award for his province, the provincial agriculturist of Bulacan said something that was very significant. He said that Bulacan had maintained its above-national-level average yield despite the increasing inroads of land conversion to non-agricultural uses. What he was talking about was one word: productivity. Rising productivity is the answer to land conversion. With even a modest increase in productivity in all of this country’s farms, national self-sufficiency in rice would be well-nigh achievable.
The 2016 Rice Achievers Awards were a big plus for the rice self-sufficiency side of the rice self-sufficiency versus food security debate.