Rice Self-Sufficiency: Possibilities in the Philippines (My notes from the media forum in IRRI)

-
We've done it before; we'll do it all over again. That is the take-home message from the media forum held in IRRI on April 19 (in connection with IRRI's 50th anniversary). The panel members during the forum were: Dr. Achim Dobermann and Mr. Jojo Lapitan (IRRI), and Dr. Sergio Francisco (PhilRice).

The question though, is really WHEN will  the Philippines have enough stocks of rice again?

Now that is a harder question to answer. Dr. Francisco has predicted that if the Philippines can produce 3.3 cavans of rice more per hectare each year, then the country will be self-sufficient in 2013. On a more realistic scale (I think), which is based on a rice yield growth of 3.7% and a population growth of ~2%, self-sufficiency is predicted to be attained in 2017. 

Why is the Philippines importing rice in the first place?

This is one of the most common questions asked by non-rice science people. The book, entitled "Why Does the Philippines Import Rice?" (published by IRRI, PhilRice), discusses various reasons. Click on the title to see these limitation factors (yes, IRRI has a habit of making its publications accessible through the internet).

From what was said in the forum, the Philippines imports rice because the Filipino consumption is very high. On the average, across locations and income classes, Filipinos eat 128 kg/capita annually. Each year, the Philippines has 2,000,000 people more to feed!! The demand for rice has gone higher than the annual rice yield. Hence, the need to import.

It must not be mistaken that the country is a bad rice producer. In fact, despite having the smallest land area available for rice farming, the Philippines is producing rice at par with some of major rice-producing countries that have a lot more land. Probably, the Philippine harvest is less in 2009, which was a particularly devastating year because of the typhoons, and in 2010 because the Philippines is still reeling from damaged irrigation systems on top of a drought. 

Throughout the discussion, Mr. Lapitan and Dr. Francisco emphasised that the issue is that every time the leadership changes, the priorities change too; hence, there's no continuity with projects that are designed to help farmers. For instance, Mr. Lapitan mentioned that when Iloilo's rice crop was endangered by a viral disease called tungro, IRRI helped by providing resistant varieties. However, when a new governor took the seat in Iloilo, he/she did not continue with the program and had sensitive varieties planted in the fields again. Welcome back, tungro! Good bye, rice harvest! 

(To me, that governor displayed sheer stupidity, really)

IRRI, according to Dr. Dobermann, can supply the technologies that farmers need, but the national agricultural research groups are responsible in distributing these technologies to the farmers on-site. So really, technology transfer relies strongly on extension workers.

Therefore, if we want to achieve rice self-sufficiency within our lifetimes, WE NEED TO VOTE FOR PEOPLE WITH STRONG POLITICAL WILL AND WHO WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE DECISIONS BENEFICIAL FOR THE RICE SELF-SUFFICIENCY PROGRAM.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe...
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in...
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma...
Read more