The choice of an appropriate national rice policy is currently being presented to Filipinos, debate-style, as a choice between food security (taking all existing ricelands out of rice production and leaving it to other countries to supply this country’s total rice requirement) and self-sufficiency in this staple of the Filipino diet. On one side, it is being asked why the Philippines has to strive for self-sufficiency when other countries – notably other Southeast Asian nations – can supply rice to this country at prices more advantageous for Filipino consumers. On the other side it is being argued that the Philippine rice industry is capable of attaining national self-sufficiency if only the government would provide Filipino rice farmers with support adequate for efficient production.
The presentation of the national rice-policy choice as one between food security and self-sufficiency is characterized by falsity. The issue is not as simple as that. It is not as facile a matter as this country’s having to choose between leaving it to other countries to make Filipinos rice-secure and its striving to produce its entire rice requirement.
A country whose production of a commodity falls short of the national requirement will buy it from other countries. That is a given. Of course, in the case of the Philippines’ rice-supply record, given is spelled with a G: during the two decades the Philippines has been either the No. 1 or the No. 2 rice importer in the world. The way things look, the Philippines’ being a major rice importer is likely to remain a fact of international life for some time to come.
Those on the food-security side of the debate (1) are asking why this country should strive for rice self-sufficiency when other countries can fill its rice requirement and (2) are proposing that the government resources devoted to rice production be diverted to other, public uses. Why continue to prop up Filipino rice growers, they are asking, when Thai, Vietnamese and other East Asian rice farmers can produce the staple at lower cost. It is the anti-self-sufficiency group’s firm belief that the Filipino consumers’ welfare will not be imperiled if the government were to withdraw its support from the rice industry.
Sound economic policymaking does dictate that, when an industry is generally inefficient and uncompetitive, whatever support it receives from the government must be gradually phased out and diverted to more beneficial uses. But here lie the flaws in the anti-self-sufficiency group’s position.
Not all of the Philippine rice industry is inefficient. Many parts of the 3 million hectares of land planted to rice and corn are high-yield areas. Chief among these are the Cagayan Valley, Nueva Ecija, Central Mindoro, Iloilo, the Bicol River basin and Central and Southern Mindanao. These were the areas that the late Secretary (later Minister of Agriculture) Arturo Tanco identified with the foreign aid agencies as the nation’s highest yielding areas for purposes of the Masagana 99 rice program. Adequately supported with irrigation and other production inputs – especially credit and agricultural extension services – these growing areas can again produce rice sufficient to feed the Filipino people.
But that’s just the point. The Philippine rice industry – and the companion corn industry – have not been receiving the production support conducive to the attainment of the highest possible yields. Before jettisoning the Philippine rice industry and placing the nation’s food security in the hands of Vietnamese and Thai farmers, the anti-self-sufficiency folk should go out to the countryside and talk to the rice farmers.
This discussion begs the question: Are rice self-sufficiency and food security mutually exclusive? Must it be an either-or situation? What is so terrible about being able to achieve rice self-sufficiency?
I fail to see how rice self-sufficiency and food security can be incompatible with one another. Given the kind of support that the governments of countries like Thailand and Vietnam – translation: full support – I see no reason why the Philippine rice industry cannot perform as well as its counterparts in those countries and thereby make the Filipino people food-secure. Masagana 99 showed that it can. Fully supported, today’s Filipino rice farmers can reprise that program.
Finally, two thoughts about the imports that domestic production deficits render necessary. News about impending rice imports have the predictable effect of bringing down the prices that Filipino rice farmers are paid for their outputs. And imports undertaken by the National Food Authority – currently the only means of importing rice – have become classic generators of corruption.
E-mail: rudyromero777@yahoo.com