By Genalyn Kabiling
The country’s huge population and shortage of farmlands are among the factors preventing the Philippine from becoming self-sufficient in rice, President Duterte said last Thursday.
The President gave a stark assessment about the country’s rice supply situation a day after declaring the rice importation will continue under his watch.
“We should have been able to control the population commensurate to our resources but we did not. So until now, do not ever believe na we will be rice sufficient because there will never be a time na aabot ‘yan sa mundong ito,” Duterte said during a gathering of barangay officials in Sta. Rosa, Laguna last Thursday.
“And the reason why I’m saying this is we cannot really maybe dream of sasabihin mo na self-sufficient. There ain’t no land anymore,” he said.
Duterte pointed out that many arable lands for agriculture have either been sold or leased for cash crop production and commercial use.
“Nobody plants because there are no more available arable lands for agriculture na pwede mong por hectare, por hektarya, lalagyan mo ng palay or even corn,” he said
“The fact is that most of the lands there are geared towards cash crop not food crop,” he added.
President Duterte earlier said the country would just have to import rice since it cannot be rice sufficient. Duterte said he does not believe Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol’s belief the country could attain rice sufficiency by the end of the year.
He noted that many lands, including those in Mindanao, have been converted to produce cash crops that are mainly for export instead of food crops to meet the Filipinos’ rice requirements.
“They want to produce from the land, which is really very fertile, gawaing cash crop. Meaning to say export – banana, pineapple, cacao, lahat na,” he said.
