Rice Sufficency in Two Years?

It is simply amazing that after 400 years as a Spanish colony, 77 years of independence, and thousands of years of civilization before then the Philippines cannot get their rice problems sorted. You would think that by now the nation would have figured out the best way to get the highest yield. That is not the case. The Philippines depends on importing millions of tons of rice each year to feed the people. 

During his campaign for the presidency Bongbong Marcos floated the outlandish and ridiculous fantasy of P20 per kilo rice. Now he says the Philippines can attain rice sufficency within two years.  

https://mb.com.ph/2023/02/16/marcos-ph-to-attain-rice-self-sufficiency-in-2-years/

As long as the government could carry out significant reorganizations involving different agencies, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. expressed confidence that the country would be close to attaining self-sufficiency in rice in two years.

Marcos said this following a meeting at Malacañang with the officials of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the National Irrigation Administration (NIA), who briefed him on the state of the country’s irrigation system.

In a video message, the President, who also leads the DA, said they were able to start a timetable of the things the government needed to do for the country to be rice self-sufficient.

“There’s a lot to fix, a lot to reorganize. But if we can do all that, we will be close to self-sufficiency for rice in two years,” he said.

“There’s a great deal of work to do but we have an idea of how to do it. So that’s what we will work on for now,” he added.

According to the President, it would require cooperation, convergence, and coordination with other agencies such as the DA, NIA, Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).

“So our next meeting will be that. All concerned agencies will be there, and we will present the timetable as to what needs to be done, what forms of coordination need to be done,” Marcos said.

The Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) program was created under Republic Act (RA) No. 11203 or the Rice Tariffication Law to improve farmers’ competitiveness amid the liberalization of the rice trade policy.

NIA, a government-owned or controlled corporation (GOCC) responsible for irrigation development and management, has a total investment pledge of more than P1 trillion from potential private partners, which would allow it to pursue its irrigation projects without the restriction of limited funding.

As of December 31, 2021, only 2.04 million hectares (ha), or 65 percent of the country’s potential irrigable area of 3.13 million hectares, had been developed, benefitting around 1.5 million farmers with irrigation.

However, around 1.09 million ha (35 percent) of the remaining areas still need development.

It's idiocy like this why Marcos should not be the Department of Agriculture secretary. All the Philippines has to do is fix a few things and the nation can be 100% rice sufficient within two years? It's not going to happen. This tune has been sung many times. Here it is being sung in 2014:

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/money/content/370204/phl-on-track-to-meet-100-rice-self-sufficiency-in-2016-agri-chief/story/

The Philippines is still on track to become 100 percent self-sufficient in rice by the end of the Aquino administration's term despite the pronouncements by a former senator and now presidential adviser that the goal will not be achieved, the Secretary of Agriculture said Monday. 

"We have to remind him that we are already at 96 percent level, why go back to 90?" Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said in a briefing in Quezon City.

In 2018 I wrote a lengthy article about the nation's rice woes. Looking back at it it's amazing how nothing changes in the Philippines. Not even the players change as Philippine politics is the same few families playing the same old game. That game is called government incompetence and mismanagement. The rice tarrification law which Duterte signed hasn't helped farmers at all.

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2023/02/15/2245174/4-years-rice-tariffication-farmers-income-hectare-shrank-40

A research and advocacy group has renewed the call to junk the Rice Liberalization Law, saying it has failed to deliver on the promise of boosting farmers' incomes and worsening the country's import dependency four years since it took effect.

An analysis by IBON foundation published Tuesday found that rice farmers' net returns per hectare decreased by around 40% – or from P32,976 to P19,680 – after rice tarrification was implemented in 2019.

"The effect is even worse when inflation is taken into account. When adjusted for 2018 prices, the real income rice farmers lost is worth P15,053,” the think tank said. “Not only did farmers lose money since rice liberalization, but their purchasing power also weakened as well.”

IBON foundation scored the current government for its “lack of interest” in supporting local production of rice in the long run, which placed the country’s rice farmers at risk of “plunging further in the spiral of import dependence.”

Rice watchdog Bantay Bigas also called for a repeal of Republic Act 11203, saying it pushed prices of unhusked rice to P7 per kilogram in Bicol in 2019 to 2020, which has now stagnated at P10 - P15 per kilogram on average. 

Farmer Mila Lirio of Bantay Bigas said that rice farmers have yet to recover from the massive income loss brought by rising fuel prices, which drove up costs of pesticides, seeds and other farming necessities. 

Rice-producing regions have also been ravaged by severe typhoons in the last three years, which lead to damaged rice fields and a drastic reduction in local rice harvests.

"The price of rice has now reached P40 - P50 per kilogram. We still haven't seen the P20 per kilogram of rice that was promised by President Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos, Jr. He’s now the secretary of the Department of Agriculture, but we still haven’t seen concrete solutions to our problems,' Lirio said in Filipino. 

Bantay Bigas also estimated that rice farmers saw a drastic loss of income to a tune of P206 billion from the rice crisis and from imported rice.

Farmers are losing money and fields ravaged by typhoons have reduced the local rice harvest drastically. And what is Marcos' solution? Hybrid seeds!

https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/2023/2/15/Marcos-supports-use-of-hybrid-seeds.html

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he supports the adoption of the use of hybrid rice seeds to help local farmers increase their crop production.

Presidential Communications Office Secretary Cheloy Velicaria-Garafil on Wednesday said the chief executive made the statement following a Tuesday meeting with farmers from Central Luzon and SL Agritech Corporation (SLAC) chairman and chief executive officer Henry Lim Bon Liong.

It was Bon Liong who recommended the conversion of rice farming areas for certified seeds (CS) to hybrid seeds, Garafil said.

The SLAC executive, whose company is engaged in research and development, production, and distribution of hybrid rice seeds, noted that “hybrid farmers have reported harvesting around 7 to 15 metric tons (MT) per hectare as compared to the average 3.6 MT/hectare for inbred seeds.”

Implementing this nationwide will give better income to farmers and achieve rice sufficiency for the country, he added.

SLAC proposed to convert 1.9 million hectares of land planted with certified seeds to hybrid seeds in four years.

To support this, Marcos, who is also Agriculture secretary, said he will implement a program to encourage farmers to shift by providing subsidies, and loans.

Having poor famers go further in to debt to buy expensive magic seeds is no solution to increasing the rice crop yield. In the article above from 2014 the Philippines was said to be 96% rice sufficient. How self-sufficient is the Philippines today? 81.5%!

https://www.philstar.com/business/2022/11/18/2224541/rice-self-sufficiency-ratio-drops-815

The Philippines failed to produce more food last year as the country’s rice self-sufficiency declined to 81.5 percent in 2021, with dependence on imports for the Filipinos’ main staple increasing yet again.

In the latest report of the Philippine Statistics Authority, the country’s self-sufficiency ratio (SSR) of rice settled at 81.5 percent last year, down 3.5 percentage points from 85 percent in 2020.

SSR shows the magnitude of production in relation to domestic utilization and is the extent to which a country’s supply of commodities is derived from its own domestic production.

A ratio of less than 100 percent indicates inadequacy of food production to cope with the demand of the population.

In turn, the country’s import dependency ratio (IDR) of rice increased to 18.5 percent from 15 percent in 2020.

Data showed that last year, the Philippines imported a total of 2.77 million metric tons of rice.

Rice sufficieny has been dropping while dependency has been increasing. And we are supposed to believe that the nation will fix its rice woes in a mere two years!? It's an outlandish promise. Marcos would do well to stop making promises and start actually working on solutions to the nation's problems. He can start by appointing a full time Department of Agriculture Secretary.