Insufficient

The story from another paper must have caught the eye of readers: for the first time in 40 years, the country will be exporting rice.

That is a grabber of a story, to be sure. It suggests we have achieved rice self-sufficiency. It fills the mind with swirling images of abundant rice fields, happy farmers and warehouses bursting at the seams. It could be, as Lito Banayo so memorably declared when he was appointed to head the NFA, that we are finally “swimming in rice.”

During his stay as NFA chief, of course, Banayo presided over more rice importations and, more importantly, rice smuggling on an unprecedented scale. While our government acknowledged importations of about 800,000, international grains trade figures show actual Philippine importation of close to 2 million tons.

To be fair, the discrepancy between our official numbers and global trade figures is not limited to rice alone. Global trade figures indicate our importation of everything from equipment to food items is double what the Bureau of Customs says we imported. That discrepancy explains why our import numbers remain basically constant even as our economy is growing at over 6%.

The Palace, of course, says smuggling is not happening. This is why no one bothered to indict Banayo and why Ruffy Biazon remains commissioner of customs.

Anyway, the rice exportation story ought to be read really carefully. In the body of the story, we are told that this month, the country will indeed export 15 tons of black rice, 20 tons of hybrid Japonica rice and another 30 tons of long-grain aromatic tice.

That is where the letdown happens — and the pure propaganda content exposed. The exportation of a tiny amount of boutique rice products does not make us a food-exporting powerhouse. It certainly does not make us rice self-sufficient.

I wrote in this space, some months ago, that the goal of becoming self-sufficient in rice production is quixotic — and very likely destructive. It will force us to commit our scarcest resource (land) to cultivation of an agricultural product with the least value per hectare. That will only deepen rural poverty.

In order to achieve rice self-sufficiency, we will have to commandeer land away from more productive uses to devote them to least productive use. We will, in addition, have to commandeer our second scarcest resource (fresh water) to cultivate a crop whose cost of production here is double what it is in the mainland Asian economies, those with large rivers for irrigation.

If we commandeer land for rice production, that will push up the cost of housing and penalize both manufacturing and agro-industry — both of which create value from a unit of land at many times what rice can deliver. In a word, this goal is not only uneconomical, it is also unachievable except at extremely great cost for everybody.

It is an insane policy objective.

Unrelenting

Last week, JV Ejercito-Estrada needed to be brought to hospital due to signs of a heatstroke. The man has invested tremendous energy in this campaign. He is like a perpetual motion machine, leaving his staff huffing and puffing at his heels.

JV brought incredible energy into his own campaign for a seat in the Senate. It is not as if he is clinging on the precipice. The much-vaunted Estrada voting base already assures him a place in the winning column. That is not good enough: the son is bent on making his own mark.

Had Erap the leisure to join his son in his sorties, JV might be ranking much closer to the top of the heap. The elder Estrada is in the midst of his own battle in the City of Manila. There he has to parry the most underhanded tactics deployed by his rivals, including circulating black propaganda in large volumes. While Erap campaigns on a platform of redeeming a neglected city, his rivals chose to mount personal attacks against him.

Nevertheless, the son is not about to lose his own battle for a place in the Senate. The latest surveys put him very close to the top, with a lot of momentum on his side, despite limited resources that forced his campaign to limit advertising.

The candidate’s momentum is likely to be enhanced by his inclusion in the “white vote” list put out by a large Catholic coalition that includes El Shaddai and various other lay organizations. Endorsements from religious groups makes JV a viable contender for the top.

The strong campaign momentum is likewise due to the intensive effort on the part of JV to go beyond inherited name-recall and put substance into his electoral proposition. His campaign evolved a fully-articulated legislative agenda intending to establish a distinct turf for the candidate.

JV’s legislative agenda centers on raising public investments in quality education. He pledged to work for higher subsidies for state colleges and universities. We have seen from the experience of all the newly industrialized countries in our region that nations finally take-off after achieving a critical mass in their human capital.

He is likewise elaborating a proposed financial package that should enable poor families to send at least one child to college. He believes that it is only through widening access to public education will the cycle of poverty afflicting a third of our people be finally broken.

We can be sure JV Ejercito Estrada will show the same relentlessness in pushing his legislative agenda in the Senate as he has demonstrated in the passion invested in the current campaign.