Complacent neglect

Flour prices are already so high the P1 hot pan de sal has shrunk to a bite-size piece, and still bakeries large and small are groaning of shrinking profit margins.

If Pinoys can’t eat bread or cake, they can at least still eat rice – or is this also an endangered commodity?

Subsidized rice from the National Food Authority is now available in repacked one-kilo bags for P25, with each consumer limited to three bags per purchase.

Only a few months ago, that was the price of good quality locally grown sinandomeng, and you could get a discount of P50 if you bought a 50-kilo sack. 

These days rice dealers are reluctant to shave P1 per kilo even for regular customers who buy rice by the sack, and even if they have been increasing retail prices as sharply as the oil companies are raising fuel prices.

Affluent families will not feel the pain of higher NFA rice and pan de sal prices. But unless they belong to the miniscule percentage of the population that controls the country’s wealth, they are likely to feel the pinch of soaring prices of their favorite staple.

If they have a fondness for special imports, jasmine-scented rice now retails for about P50 a kilo, basmati at P120 and genuine paella rice from Spain at a whopping P230 to P270 a kilo depending on the brand and the outlet. Even our brown mountain rice is approaching P100 a kilo.

For the poor, the situation can be bearable if there were affordable alternatives to P25 per kilo rice.

But even prices of instant noodles have nearly doubled in recent months, and the neighborhood panaderia is phasing out the P1 pan de sal.

Prices of sardines, eggs and sugar are also on the rise.

Higher rice prices should be benefiting farmers, but the majority of our farmers are marginal rice producers and big food consumers. They are also feeling the pain of higher food prices.

Hunger tends to bring poverty under a harsh spotlight. The poor and hungry can be impressionable, vulnerable to recruitment into clandestine armed groups or into organizations critical of the government.

The poor do not care about the national debt, a balanced budget or the fiscal deficit. They judge the state of the nation by the growling of their bellies. The louder the noise, the greater the public discontent. And they will look for someone to blame for their misery.

Though the majority of the poor do not have the luxury of joining regular street protests calling for the ouster of the President, their misery can be tapped by administration critics, fueling restiveness and creating more problems in governance.

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The food problem is global and has built up over several years. All over the planet, agricultural lands are giving way to industrial development or mass housing, populations are booming, and people think farming is too much work for too little profit.

But in some countries including ours, the problem has been aggravated by complacent neglect and, in some cases, corruption.

In our tropical paradise, people used to say that no one could go hungry as long as one is willing to work. Toss a seed into the soil and it will grow; cast a net into the sea or lake and there will be fish.

That now seems like the stuff of legends.

We took pride in the fact that our experts in Los Baños developed a rice variety that helped feed the world’s hungry. But that was decades ago.

Over the years we took our blessings for granted, turning farmlands and even burial grounds into shopping malls and gated villages.

Giant earthworms infested the rice terraces of Banaue, the rice yield dropped and village youths packed their bags for better livelihood opportunities elsewhere.

We neglected our coral reefs and polluted our waters, drastically bringing down the fish catch and reviving diseases such as cholera.

We made fun of Joseph Estrada for his main achievement as a senator — a law promoting the propagation of the carabao. But it actually made sense and would have been a boon to our dairy industry if it had been pursued earlier. Carabao milk and the mozzarella that can be made from it are delectable.

Rice and corn yields could have been boosted with sufficient farm support including irrigation and fertilizer assistance.

Instead what we got was Jocelyn Bolante, still in hiding in the United States amid accusations that fertilizer funds were diverted for President Arroyo’s campaign in 2004.

These days our supermarket shelves are stocked with imported dried jackfruit chips from Vietnam, pandan rice from Thailand and basmati from India, canned coconut cream from Malaysia — products that we have in the Philippines but were late in marketing to the world. At least we have belatedly started promoting Philippine coffee.

But never mind the food exports; we neglected even our own food security.

Now we are scrounging around the world for our staple, and bemoaning the soaring prices.