Rice sufficiency and food security

BANTAY GOBYERNO

Ike Señeres

Perhaps with the intention of assuring the general public, the Department of Agriculture (DA) announced that we have a sufficient supply of rice, because we have an existing inventory that would last 87 days, three days short of 3 months.

I understand that food security is a matter of national security, but I still have to find a policy statement in writing that would specifically say how much rice inventory we should have, and how long it should last, in order to ensure food security.

It seems however that there is no such written policy pronouncement anywhere, and instead of that, we have the DA unilaterally announcing that we have food security, because we have a few months supply of rice. Without a written pronouncement, I wonder how the DA determines how much inventory is enough to ensure food security.

Of course, food security means more than just rice sufficiency, but never mind that, because for now let us just talk about our rice supplies. Not knowing how the other rice consuming countries would measure their rice sufficiency, I found one other point of comparison, and that is a phrase in the Old Testament specifically saying that there should be a grains storage that should last 7 years.

Some might say that a 7 year inventory is too much, and that it is too long to keep it. Assuming that that is the case, we can perhaps settle for less than that, but I say that our measurement should still be in years, and not in months, just to be safe, so to speak. If you ask me, I will say that it should be about half of 7 years, and that would be about 3 years. To me, 3 years definitely sounds better than 3 months.

Pardon my own line of reasoning, but I personally believe that rice sufficiency should mean self-sufficiency and that means having our own rice production, in other words we should not be relying on rice importation at all. Perhaps for the sake of argument, I would even agree that 3 months inventory would be good enough to have food security, but only if we have our own rice production to rely on, instead of relying on rice importation. But since we are talking about food security in the first place, it would only be proper for the DA to inform the public how much of the 3 months inventory is sourced from our own production, and how much is sourced from rice importation.

While it would be easy for the DA to assume that it would be easy for us to import rice supplies just in case our 3 months inventory would run out, they should be aware of the grand irony that the countries that are exporting rice to us are also rice consuming countries just like us, and that grand irony could lead to probable conflicts of interests, in the sense that these rice exporting countries might be forced not to sell to us, if they themselves would be threatened by their own rice shortages, for whatever reasons that would come up. It is reasonable to assume that these countries are now exporting rice to us because they still have their own inventories for their own food security, but their behavior could change if these inventories would run out.

It is already a known fact that China is building a second giant dam ostensibly for purposes of power generation, but we could reasonably guess that it is also for irrigation purposes. At the outset, we could say that they are doing that for their own energy security and their own food security, and that is none of our business.

That is not the case however, because that second giant dam could potentially block off the water that usually goes to the Mekong River, and that is a possibility that could threaten the water supply for the irrigation needs of the entire Mekong Delta. How I wish that that is the problem of the countries in Indochina and that is none of our business, but the fact is, these are the same countries that are exporting rice to us.

Halfway across the world, a similar problem is already happening in Africa, as Ethiopia is blocking off the water that usually goes to Egypt via the Nile River. Of course, Egypt could always claim that the Nile River is theirs, but it does not take much for Ethiopia to make a counter claim that the water comes from them.

Likewise, the Indochinese countries could claim that the Mekong River is theirs, but on the other hand, China could make a counter claim that the water comes from them. Only a few years ago, many security experts have already predicted that the next world war could be triggered by conflicts over water rights and water supplies. That might just happen, but the war could also be about the food supplies that depend on these water sources.

As it is now, we are not yet experiencing shortages of water for irrigation purposes, even if we are lagging behind in building the infrastructure that would deliver irrigation water to our rice farms.

That is definitely a problem, but aside from that, we are also facing the problem of rising sea levels, a problem that will cause the permanent flooding of many coastal areas. For sure, huge areas of rice lands will be covered by either saline water or brackish water, and this will definitely affect our rice production. This is the reason why I have been promoting the cultivation of saline rice varieties. As a matter of fact, saline rice production has been successfully tried and tested by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

Despite having excellent irrigation facilities, Israel has disallowed the cultivation of rice, citing the reason that it is not economically efficient, because it requires too much water. That is a choice that they had to make, because of their scarce water resources. Instead of planting rice, they planted higher value crops and fruits such as oranges. From the money that they earned from these alternative harvests, they simply bought the rice that they need from the other countries.

That is a choice that we could not make, because rice is a political issue for us here. Besides, we do not have problems (not yet) with water scarcity. In our case, we have no choice but to aim for self-sufficiency in rice production, not only for economic reasons, but also for political reasons.

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