Farm exodus

Last Thursday I went to my favorite rice dealer, which has a massive warehouse stocked with a wide selection of rice varieties.

Prices have dropped for my preferred varieties, from last year’s high of about P500 additional for every 50 kilos to almost the pre-inflation price.

The dealer sells rice from all over the rice-producing provinces of Luzon. Since Republic Act 11203 or the rice tariffication law came into force last February, the supplier has started selling imported varieties. These are noteworthy for two things: they are all of good quality, and they are cheaper than comparable local varieties.

Much cheaper.

Since the start of rice tariffication, I had vowed to continue buying only local rice, to support our farmers. But last Thursday, I couldn’t resist the “Princess Hasmin” brand imported from Vietnam, a long-grain variety described by the product tag as “masarap, malambot” or soft and tasty. And it was amazingly fragrant. When cooked, it did justice to the description, too.

At P1,880 per cavan or 50 kilos, Hasmin came down to just P37.60 per kilo. That’s just a bit higher than the cheapest local variety sold by the dealer, priced at P34 per kilo. The P34 is still higher than the National Food Authority rice that used to be sold at P27 to P30 per kilo. The local varieties of comparable quality to the well-milled Hasmin were priced at P39 to P47 per kilo.

The Hasmin was placed in front of the display room where customers can inspect all the varieties for sale, in open sacks bearing the brands. There was one other variety in front: imported well-milled Japanese rice. Yes, the type used for sushi – short-grain, round, one of the most expensive varieties in the world because of limited production, now amazingly priced at just over P50 per kilo. Maybe the Vietnamese have also learned to mass-produce Japanese rice.

Being a regular rice consumer, of course I’m glad that prices of our staple are down. But seeing the prices of the local varieties, I don’t see how our small-scale farmers can compete and survive the deluge of cheaper imports.

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The Duterte administration must be sighing: when prices soared, you moaned and carped. Now that prices have plunged, you’re still moaning and carping.

Duterte’s chief number cruncher, boyhood pal Carlos Dominguez, put it this way: the country has a population of about 105 million, of which five million are rice farmers. Whose needs do you prioritize? Isn’t it a no-brainer? The farmers are also rice consumers so they benefit from cheaper rice prices.

Like the security of tenure controversy, however, rice tariffication has complicated nuances. The most immediate concern is what will happen to our rice farmers, who complain that since imports began flooding the market, the farmgate price of palay has plummeted to as low as P12 per kilo.

Over the weekend, there were reports that about 200,000 farmers have abandoned rice fields since February alone while 4,000 rice mills have shut down. The trend is likely to continue, with prices dropping by 16.4 percent as of July compared to the same period last year.

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The families that have tended the Banaue rice terraces for generations will tell you that once people abandon farming due to poor earnings and turn to other sources of livelihood, it’s unlikely for them to ever return to tilling the land.

Under RA 11203, the rice import tariffs will go to a Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund. The RCEF will finance the infrastructure and other agricultural support services that are meant to make local rice farmers more competitive.

Even before the enactment of RA 11203, an initial P5 billion was supposedly released for farm support, with P1 billion set aside for rice farmers’ credit access. The Senate is set to look into reports that the Department of Agriculture and the National Economic and Development Authority have not yet even decided which one will handle the remaining P4 billion, and for what specific purposes.

Assuming that the RCEF is used for its intended purpose – always a big if in this country – it will still take time before the full benefits are felt by farmers.

In the meantime, it’s “unli” season for rice importation. And with rampant smuggling, the cheap imports can become even cheaper – so much cheaper than the local competition.

It can kill our farmers – unless they can produce rice quickly at competitive prices.

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Proponents of rice importation say that we can never hope to compete with countries such as Vietnam, which have the Mekong River for abundant irrigation – a critical component of rice production.

We might not be able to produce enough rice for export, but why can’t we produce enough for our own consumption, at prices that can compete with rice from Vietnam?

Our small-scale farmers can also be assisted in producing pricey varieties, to boost their incomes and discourage them from abandoning farming. Proponents of RA 11203 point out that it liberalizes not just the importation but also the export of rice.

We have wonderful varieties of artisanal rice: brown mountain rice, high-grade glutinous, long-grain black, red, and the purple pirurutong used for genuine puto bumbong (no food coloring). These are not GMOs like the imported bright yellow varieties that I have seen in some countries.

I once bought organic black wild rice in Minnesota, grown in state farms and sold in neat little packages, just to find out what might justify its steep price. The packaging bore detailed instructions on how to cook it, which boiled down to something rice-eating Pinoys already know: for colored rice, the ratio is two parts water for one part rice instead of one is to one.

When I tasted it, I thought I detected a subtle nutty flavor, but maybe I was just imagining an excuse to justify the price tag. I consoled myself with the thought that it was organic and perhaps healthier than white rice.

Our special rice varieties can compete with that. But our farmers need assistance in acquiring the seeds, knowledge in nurturing the plants through natural fertilizers and pest killers (to justify the “organic” tag), processing the rice for sale and then marketing their products.

For regular rice, there must be ways of bringing down farmers’ production costs to allow local varieties to compete with imports in terms of pricing. But this must happen quickly, before more farmers join the exodus from the land.

Surely President Duterte does not want to be remembered as the person who killed the Filipino rice farmer.