THE Rice Tariffication Law achieved its goal of keeping rice prices down as so much cheap rice was imported from Vietnam and Thailand. But it also deprived our Filipino rice famers of their usual market, and so we may soon see the end of rice farming in our country.
The Philippine Statistics Authority reported that the average rice prices at the farm gate had dropped to P17.85 per kilo in July, down 17 percent from a year ago. Farmers in Nueva Ecija and Isabela reported even lower prices – P12 a kilo. Rice consumers are happy but rice growers may have to shift to other crops if they are to survive as farmers.
President Duterte has come up with a short-range emergency solution, what he called a “happy compromise.” During the rice harvest season – December to January for the 2.7 million hectares of rain-fed farms and March to April for the 1.2 million hectares of irrigated farms – the government will be buying its rice reserves only from Philippine farmers.
“Buy all the stocks even if it’s expensive, before importing,” the President ordered. The rest of the year, the government may buy the cheaper imported rice for its stocks.
But this is just an emergency solution, to keep Philippine rice agriculture from disappearing. It would be such a shame if this country of rice-eaters has to depend totally on rice farmers in other countries who can produce it at much less cost.
The real solution to the problem is for our farmers to lower their production costs. If Viet and Thai farmers can do it, so can we. But it will take an organized and systematic government program to reach out to our farmers and provide them with high-yielding rice varieties and the constant assistance of extension workers, provide them with sufficient irrigation water, help them acquire tractors and other modern agricultural machinery, set up facilities in which to keep their harvests protected from pests, and help them organize themselves to market their products. In other words, organize the Philippine rice industry from beginning to end, from land preparation to marketing of harvests.
There is a R10-billion Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund which Congress enacted as early as November, 2018. In his last State of the Nation Address, President Duterte called for the full implementation of this law. We may need to provide an even greater fund to carry out a really comprehensive rice production program for our country, one that will not only free us from annual importations, but will also make us a rice-exporting nation.
This is a goal so many previous administrations have aspired for. It was the goal of Masagana 99 of then President Marcos. The International Rice Research Center was set up in Los Baños in 1960 and farm officials from Vietnam, Thailand, and other nearby countries came to learn of modern rice production systems that have since carried out in their countries.
We have been left behind, as various Philippine administrations have concentrated on various other goals. It is time to go back to that one old goal – to be self-sufficient in rice, our national staple food, so inseparable from our culture as Filipinos.
