Rice, a most important food commodity, is also a weapon

Part 1

MANILA, Philippines - One could go through life virtually without salt, but not without rice, the staple food of more than half the world’s population.

Rice is our most important food commodity, and its availability or scarcity would weigh down heavily on the overall food situation.

Our population is growing very fast and so is the world’s. In fact, the population growth rate has outpaced food production. As a result, there is today a worldwide shortage of food. What compounds the situation is the unexpected off and on occurrence of typhoons, drought and other natural calamities which greatly deplete the food reserves of the world.

If we closely examine the global sit-uation, we could easily see that food de-termines the strength and the stability of nations. In countries where there is war, food is the prime factor that enables people to endure long periods of con-frontation. And where there is political conflict, food becomes an important weapon, as in the case of food embargoes.

The Philippines serves as Asia’s (and perhaps the world’s) center for research on the best scientific methods of rice production. Yet today, we find ourselves importing rice, spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year and, in the process, subsidizing foreign farmers.

Definitely, we cannot be totally dependent on foreign sources to supply our need for rice. Global statistics show that of the total quantity of grains being produced, less than three percent is being traded. A slight decrease in the world’s cereal production even by just five percent will adversely affect many rice-producing countries.

Certainly, we have to safeguard our country from contingencies. We do not want a repetition of the 1973 rice crisis during which our domestic supply of the commodity was very low.

Former food minister and administrator of the National Food Authority (NFA) Jesus Tanchanco recalled: “We then had all the money to import our requirement and were even willing to buy at high prices, but we could not do so because even the traditional rice-exporting countries then withheld their exports because they also had their own supply problems.”

In rice production, there are still thousands of hectares of virgin lands that can be turned into verdant rice fields. Should we succeed in this, there may come a time when we will no longer have to import rice which is our most important food commodity.

(To be continued)