The resolution of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to place a cap on the value of rice nationwide – efficient instantly – is unquestionably welcome information to many Filipinos, particularly probably the most susceptible. But everyone knows these are momentary measures that want long-term options to deal with the hovering costs of the family staple.

Agricultural group SINAG (Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura) expressed help for the President’s imposition of the value ceiling of P41 per kilogram for normal milled rice and P45 per kilogram for well-milled rice, saying that merchants and retailers won’t go bankrupt because the farmgate value of the present rice shares are from P20 to P23.

Based on the assertion of the Department of Agriculture throughout the latest House committee on appropriations listening to and from their very own computation, the nation should not have any rice scarcity, in line with SINAG government director Jayson Cainglet. However, an announcement from the National Food Authority a few weeks in the past that they solely have two weeks’ price of buffer inventory might have triggered a way of panic – with unscrupulous merchants profiting from the scenario to govern the value of rice and make them skyrocket.

There are a number of components why the value of rice has continued to skyrocket, particularly prior to now few weeks. Obviously, one of many causes is value manipulation by the rice cartels in addition to the apply of hoarding by opportunistic merchants, as seen within the discovery of some 154,000 sacks of imported rice price P431 million being hoarded in a number of warehouses in Bulacan throughout a shock inspection collectively performed by authorities businesses that embrace the Bureau of Customs.

The latest typhoons domestically named Falcon and Egay have already brought on billions price of injury to agricultural crops that embrace rice and corn. Global costs of rice and different staples have additionally been impacted by the battle in Ukraine, particularly after Russia determined to finish an settlement that allowed Ukraine to export its grain to the remainder of the world by the Black Sea.

The scenario was additionally exacerbated by the choice of India to ban the exportation of rice, sending shock waves internationally, triggering panic shopping for and inflicting costs to soar to a close to 12-year excessive, in line with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. India is the biggest exporter of rice and accounts for some 40 p.c of the worldwide commerce in 2022, with exports totaling 22 million tons to 140 international locations that embrace the Philippines.

India doesn’t have a rice scarcity and has round 41 million tons of buffer inventory of their authorities warehouses, and but their home value for rice in addition to different meals costs has been rising. India’s imposition of the rice ban, nonetheless, has raised fears that different international locations resembling Thailand and Vietnam, which additionally provide rice to the Philippines, would observe go well with due to the El Niño dry spell anticipated to hit subsequent 12 months.

But the most important wrongdoer in our present rice dilemma is the land reform program which was, in many individuals’s view, an enormous failure. It had so many loopholes that enabled large hacienderos to go across the program by changing or reclassifying agricultural land into residential and industrial areas. Hacienda Luisita was a evident instance of how the issues within the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program was taken benefit of as a result of it was exempted from the protection, with farmers given a inventory distribution possibility as an alternative of land.

The land distributed to farmer-beneficiaries was additionally restricted to 5 hectares, making it tough to make the farmland productive. For a farmer to be productive, he ought to have the ability to increase his land to 10 hectares on the very least. Sadly, lots of the beneficiaries additionally ended up promoting the land as that they had no cash to pay for tractors to make farming extra environment friendly, purchase seeds, fertilizers and different farming requirements.

There is not any query that we must always all be very involved concerning the difficulty. Aside from going after smugglers, hoarders and value manipulators, the President is searching for methods to resolve our rice dilemma, amongst them using hybrid, climate-resilient rice varieties to spice up manufacturing and enhance rice yields. Another is using fashionable expertise and innovation to remodel agriculture within the nation and modernize the rice sector.

“It’s up to us now in the Philippine government to make sure those technologies, those products go down to the grassroots,” the President had mentioned.

We have had a number of provides of assist from our pals in Washington, DC to enhance our rice manufacturing by fashionable farming expertise in addition to information switch and cooperation on agricultural innovation and meals safety.

I had dinner the opposite night time with Paul Taylor, the industrial attaché of the US embassy. He knowledgeable me there might be a big group of about 15 to twenty US agricultural expertise corporations coming to Manila early subsequent month – an offshoot of the President’s go to to Washington, DC final May when he met with US Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack.

These American corporations are prepared to assist the Philippines obtain its meals safety agenda by digital and precision agriculture to effectively scale back water use; enhance manufacturing and scale back crop losses; drone expertise; crop safety options; automated post-harvest services and lots of others. We are arranging for them to fulfill with the President throughout their go to.

I’m extraordinarily happy that every one the great work put in by our embassy in Washington, DC, particularly within the space of meals safety, is clearly shifting in the precise path.

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