At the Maligaya, City of Muñoz headquarters, in the image above (from Food Evolution, foodevolution.com.ph):
PhilRice itself as institution shows its over-emphasis on the rice –while the rice farmer is missing!
PhilRice was born 34 years ago. At its own website, which I accessed today, Monday, 20 May 2019, PhilRice says (philrice.gov.ph):
Since its creation in November 1985, PhilRice has stood by its reason-for-being: to help respond to the needs of the struggling rice farmers and the country's endeavors to attain self-sufficiency in rice.
"To attain self-sufficiency in rice."
Small change!
Small change!
Unfortunately, after almost 4 decades of PhilRice, the Philippines is not self-sufficient in rice.
And what has PhilRice done "to help respond to the needs of the struggling rice farmers" if I may ask? Not sufficient!
For years, I have been a board member of the Nagkaisa Multi-Purpose Cooperative in my hometown Asingan in Pangasinan, and being the son of a farmer in the village of Sanchez, I should know this:
Our rice farmers are struggling, have been struggling against poverty.
And why is that? PhilRice has not taught them how to become entrepreneurs themselves and earn good money from their honest labors – and sustain their terrestrial productivity as well as the economic growth of their families.
The signing of RA 11203, the Rice Tariffication Law on February this year, opened the floodgates for rice importation into the Philippines. That means the businessmen are now making money from rice, while our rice farmers are making do with whatever they can get from the National Food Authority, NFA, buying their rice harvests. The NFA is helping the farmers, yes, but like PhilRice what it's doing is not sufficient.
I have been trying to wake up PhilRice from its slumber of almost 40 years and open its institutional eyes to the reality that the cost of production of rice in the Philippines is P12/kg; compare that with Thailand's P8/kg, and Vietnam's P6/kg. Hard-headed? Already, within 3 months, I have blogged my own 25 essays on rice tariffication, its expected effects, and what we could do about those (see my first essay on RA 11203, "Rice Tariffication For Businessmen, Price Scarification For Farmers," 29 February 2019, Journalism for Development, blogspot.com).
Yes, PhilRice can do something big right now: Extension. What's the Internet for? Not simply text messages. And the extension must be immediate, massive and laymanized. (In 2004, I submitted to PhilRice my design of a knowledge bank called The Geography Of Knowledge; I still have a digital copy.)
What has a former Philippine Agriculture Secretary to say about it? "William Dar – We Must Help Philippine Agriculture Immediately!" (17 May 2019, Journalism for Development, blogspot.com).
What exactly can PhilRice do immediately? Actually, 15 years ago, Mr Dar himself proposed to PhilRice the creation of a knowledge bank he called Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture, OpAPA. Languishing since then, OpAPA must be revived to address the need of our struggling rice farmers to immediately cut their cost of production in order to survive – literally.
Wake up, PhilRice!517
No comments:
Post a Comment