LETTERS FROM THE AGNO

March Fianza
Fighting the rice cartel; Willie B

I heard my late manong Steve Hamada call him Willie B. He is no other than Benguet’s new Provincial Prosecutor – William Bacoling. I have fond memories of him when he first worked with the late Bembo Afable, Provincial Legal Officer. I have other stories about Fiscal Willy before he “returned to the fold of the law” and eventually work for government.

Anyway that is for another article. He will be taking his oath, tomorrow Monday, to be administered by Gov. Nestor Fongwan who, I heard, is ready to give all his support to Justice Hill, financially or otherwise. Congratulations Apo Prosecutor William Bacoling. You are happier than Mondax today, even as both of you celebrate your birthdays, because you will be taking your oath while he is busy covering the sisterhood ties between Vallejo, Calif and Baguio. Friends and relatives wish you all the best.
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Everytime I find myself in Abatan, I always buy a ganta of Kintoman or red rice in the public market. The market also serves as the trading post for assorted farm products such as lowland vegetables brought from as far as Cervantes, Ilocos Sur; beans (bukel) from Patyakan below Besao, fresh water fishes from Tinglayan in Kalinga and even wood products from Ifugao.

Aside from the Kintoman type, backyard rice farmers plant brown rice, black rice (balatinao) and glutinous rice for rice cake (kankanen). They can be found in ricefields around Mt. Data in Bauko, in areas irrigated by the Agno River in the east such as Buguias, down to Kabayan, Bokod, Itogon and the contiguous lowland communities of Eastern Pangasinan; and Eastern Ilocos ricefields irrigated by the Abra and Amburayan rivers.

In Benguet and Mt. Province , certain towns grow Kintoman for home use or for future rituals. Farmers plant this type in the middle area of their rice fields and exchange this for other basic needs or sell their harvest in the nearest public market. But the supply is not available all year round.

This style of trading is still practiced especially in communities where cash is not always on hand. It characterizes the actual economic situation of non-commercial farmers in the countryside.

What is pointed out here is that upland and lowland communities basically are involved in rice farming. The situation does not change in other parts of the country. Wherever you go by land, you traverse ricefields managed by local businessmen or maintained by families for personal consumption.

Rice farmers hoard a year’s supply for their own consumption and sell the rest for cash to buy other needs. This tells us that “there is no rice shortage” in the country – a factual situation that is confirmed by farmers in Isabela, Tabuk, Nueva Ecija and the Ilocos.

Local and foreign agriculturists insist on the same report. They say the problem is that the “supply does not meet the demand because of businessmen-hoarders.” This results to higher rice prices in the market that continues to rise because of other factors such as high fertilizer cost.

Other economists say the “rice shortage scare” is partly caused by the government not investing enough in the agricultural sector to make it more productive, the fact that we have poor irrigation and farming or marketing support is too little.

And while it has knowledge of these facts, the government still allows the indiscriminate conversion of rice lands for commercial, industrial and residential development that has turned the country from “rice exporter to importer.”

The country’s national daily consumption is estimated to be at 34,000 tons. Agriculturists and economists in the US estimate that Filipinos consume around 12 to 15 million metric tons a year.

It imports between 1 million to 2.5 million tons each year that is around 10 per cent of its total consumption. The government is expected to buy 2.7 million tons this year worth P58 billion
Cavite Rep. Elpidio Barganza Jr. submitted a bill that might be the means to stop government spending on rice imports and may yet prove to be the answer to a rice farmer’s miseries. Among President Arroyo’s partymates, Rep. Barganza may be the only guy who is making sense.

He is urging government to peg a premium price for all locally produced rice and buy all of these to help defray farmers’ expenses. In this way, government will be ‘hitting two birds with one stone’ as it would be helping all local rice farmers finance their ricefields, whether commercial or non-commercial, and would be lowering rice imports at the same time.

In the event that Barganza’s proposal is approved, businessmen-hoarders will disappear from the picture one by one and rice prices would naturally go down.

Farm experts also assessed the country’s situation saying that instead of spending on rice imports, the government can use the money better by improving farm irrigation systems to support Filipino farmers.

Upland and lowland rice farmers know that putting in place irrigation systems allow them to prepare their ricefields for planting even in the dry months. Farmers who own rain-fed ricefields can only harvest once in a year. Of the country’s 3.1 million hectares of irrigable lands, only 46 per cent is irrigated.

Studies revealed that the country has to spend around P40 billion pesos annually on building new irrigation facilities while maintaining existing ones, but government spends only about P20 billion a year for these. It spends almost P60 billion to import rice.

Even the Rice Watch and Action Network (RWAN or R1), a non-government organization said, the country can not always be relying on rice imports to meet its demand because “what will happen if rice exporters decide not to sell?”

True enough, Thailand , Pakistan , India , Egypt , Cambodia and Vietnam imposed rice export restrictions to their neighbors early this year.

Unless the government pours more funds for improvement of irrigation systems and scientific farming, self-sufficiency will always be a dream. – marchfianza777@yahoo.com