“A lot of speculation swirled around the 300,000 ton “unauthorized and therefore illegal” sugar importation.”
Not really out of the box but quite interesting is Albay Rep. Joey Salceda’s posit of the need for “demand management” to mitigate food supply problems in the country.
In an interview when I was with the National Food Authority, I underscored the country’s high per capita consumption of rice, and mentioned the Mang Inasal “unli rice” promotional gimmick as an example.
That marketing tool was quite successful, and Mang Inasal made a billionaire of Iloilo’s Injap Sia. Meanwhile, I was criticized in media for even proposing to limit the Filipino’s intake of rice.
In a Senate budget hearing, Sen. Serge Osmena stressed that “curbing demand” is not a viable solution to our rice supply problems, as it is very difficult to “fight culture” which includes dietary habits.
Our per capita consumption of the staple grain is anywhere between 126 to 132 kilos of rice per annum.
This determines the annual over-all demand for rice when multiplied by the population. Supply is measured in terms of local production, a function of two major harvests each year: summer, the April-May harvest, and the September-October main harvest.
The summer harvest is smaller because only irrigated lands can be planted in the November-December planting season, while the wet season crop includes rain-fed lands.
Generally, a 10 percent shortage between demand and domestic production is a given. It could become higher, generally 15 percent or more, if harvests are low due to either drought or strong typhoons that destroy our mature palay.
In contrast, the Japanese eat very little rice, although their short-grain variety is so, so ambrosial in taste, texture and aroma. So do the Taiwanese, whose preference for rice, unlike that of the mainland, is for the short-grain variety.
But the Japanese per capita consumption is only around 52 kilos, while Taiwan’s 23 million people eat only 48 kilos per capita annually.
Vietnamese and Thais eat about the same as Filipinos, give or take a few kilos here and there. But there is an inside story to those high numbers.
There is also the observation that the richer a country gets, the lower the consumption of rice, which probably explains why Bangladesh, Cambodia and Laos consume plenty of rice per person each year compared to the rest of Asia.
In China, urban consumption is markedly lower than in rural populations.
But how do you tame per capita consumption of rice?
When I was in Taiwan from 2016 till mid-2021, I noticed that viands were relatively cheap, aside from being of good quality, whether you bought from the grocery or ate in their “ipay-ipay,” our version of the carinderia.
A typical lunch box worth 80 to 120 NT (roughly 140 to 200 pesos) would have a little rice, topped with pork, beef, chicken or fish, and two vegetables plus tofu. Very healthy and balanced.
Juxtapose that with the minimum wage of 24,000 NT (around 43,000) and you have an idea as to why Filipino job-seekers prefer Taiwan, over other Asian work destinations.
Why do the Taiwanese eat less rice? Because viands are cheap and vegetables abound. Fish is plentiful, and so are pork and poultry, though beef is generally imported. Children are exposed to vegetables early on.
Now let us tackle sugar, where perhaps Salceda’s demand management is indeed quite apt.
We consume a lot of sugar, in the form of soft drinks and ersatz fruit drinks (mostly sugar plus artificial flavoring), pastries and desserts, bread (our Pinoy tasty and even our pan de sal use up a lot of sugar), candies and “kakanin.”
Even the staple “ulam” of canned sardines use sugar. Why, we even have sweet spaghetti, and our ketchup and tomato sauces have a “Pinoy” sweet version!
So Rep. Joey wants to ban sugared soda and “fruit” beverages in schools. Accompanied by the proper teaching of nutritional values to our kids, we can in due time “manage” demand.
For starters, we should teach everyone that brown sugar is healthier and better, while white refined sugar is bleached with chemicals to acquire its nice color.
Healthier and cheaper too. In our house, ever since I can remember, we use brown or washed sugar with our coffee, because my mom told us early on that white sugar was unhealthy. Nowadays I use a teaspoon of honey with my morning mug of coffee.
We can also manage demand by imposing higher taxes, treating sugared beverages like we treat tobacco products and alcoholic drinks. Not necessarily “sin” taxes but with pretty much similar effect—to curb consumption.
It’s all about deliberately cultivating a mindset, and the taste buds.
My kids hardly touch soft drinks because we trained them that way in their growing years. Drink water, not Coke nor Pepsi products. Take real fruits, instead of bottled “fruit” juices.
These solutions take time to materialize and take effect, but we should start in that direction. Salceda should talk to his good friend, Vice President and DepEd Secretary Sara Duterte about demand management starting from early education, and to DOF Secretary Ben Diokno about taxing these unhealthy sugary sinful products.
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A lot of speculation swirled around the 300,000 ton “unauthorized and therefore illegal” sugar importation.
In its aftermath, we have USec Leocadio Sebastian, an upright and competent DA official, resigning and taking the sword for his boss, the President. Following him, as of this writing, was SRA board director Rolando Beltran and SRA Administrator Hermenegildo Serafica, both hold-overs from the Duterte administration.
We have yet to see how this sugar import brouhaha unfolds. Most people judged SRA and Sebastian immediately, but domestic production numbers are easy to compute, and industry consumption as well.
So if we foresee a shortage of supply by October, we should be importing this early. It’s not like buying “suka” from the sari-sari store. It takes time from a letter of credit to actual shipments and delivery to our ports.
Meanwhile, our manufacturing industry’s processed food products, many of them with export markets, or our bakeries and pastry shops, should not be held hostage by indecision and the lobbying of the sugar bloc. Nor our consumers, for that matter.
There is a whole value chain on which sugar plays an important role, and managing consumer demand is for the future, not present market realities.
