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Rice prices are likely to keep rising for some time as production of
the popular cereal fails to keep up with soaring demand, the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) said Friday.
The institute is based in Los Baños town,
Laguna province, south of Manila.
Speaking also in Los Baños during a meeting
called by the institute’s board of trustees, an official of an
Asian rice organization said the currently high prices of the staple
of millions worldwide will last for 24 more months.
“There is no possibility of rice prices going
down in the next two years,” said M. Syeduzzaman, chairman of BOC
Bangladesh Ltd., Bank Asia Limited, Bangladesh Rice Foundation.
Philippine Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, who
was also at the meeting, explained that rice prices are determined
by production costs, exports, fertilizers, weather changes, and
other factors.
Yap said the institute’s trustees told him
that the Philippines is not among the 33 to 36 countries that are
already experiencing social unrest because of the soaring rice
prices. He mentioned, though, that the country has 4.7 million
families that are vulnerable, and 2.7 million most vulnerable, under
such trend.
He announced that he will meet with Quezon City
Mayor Feliciano Belmonte, Caloocan City Mayor Echiverri, Mandaluyong
City Mayor Benhur Abalos, and Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim today to ask
for their help in identifying the vulnerable families in their
cities.
Yap said he will also tap local-government units
to help the Agriculture department identify such families.
Dr. Robert Zeigler, director general of the IRRI,
said the Philippines has already secured import supplies from
Vietnam and other countries, aside from the domestic production of
the country. He said that if ever the country experienced problems
in importing rice to shore up its requirements, it can look at roots
crops as alternatives.
The IRRI trustees stressed that the situation at
present is not about rice shortage but more on “rice-price
crisis.”
They called on the international community,
particularly donors, to start focusing on solutions to the
rice-price crisis.
“Increased production is needed to ease the
sharp rise in rice prices that has swept across the region, causing
uncertainty and concern,” the institute’s trustees said.
Possible solutions
Prof. Elizabeth Woods, the newly appointed board
chairman, said “the problems related to rice production and supply
in Asia over the past year or so are a cause for serious concern,
but not for panic.”
The institute recommended heightened attention
by the public and private sectors to six key areas: agronomic
revolution in Asian rice production to reduce existing yield gaps;
acceleration of delivery of new post-harvest technologies; stepping
up of introduction of higher yielding rice varieties; strengthening
and upgrading rice breeding and research pipelines; acceleration of
research on the world’s thousands of rice varieties so scientists
can tap the vast reservoir of untapped knowledge they contain; and
development of a new generation of rice scientists and researchers
for the public and private sectors.
Threat of unrest
IRRI earlier warned of potential civil unrest as
governments struggle to provide cheap rice amid a sustained rise in
prices over the past two years to near-record levels.
“Longer term demand-supply imbalance is
clearly indicated by depletion of stock that has been going on for
years, the latest edition of the institute’s publication Rice
Today quoted IRRI economist Sushil Pandey as saying.
“We have been consuming more than what we have
been producing and research to increase rice productivity is needed
to address this imbalance,” Pandey added.
Just 7 percent of the annual global production
of the grain, a staple food of more than three billion people mostly
living in the developing world, is traded in the international
market. This apparently minimal trading, IRRI explained, stems from
rice being seen as a political commodity and governments strive to
maintain large stocks to guard against large price swings.
The institute said it had convened a group of
experts to draw up a list of possible solutions to the crisis and
they agreed that raising yields was the only long-term solution.
It added that the crisis was affecting both the
urban poor as well as rice farmers who till small plots that cannot
produce enough even for their own families’ use.
“Although the current rising rice price was
seen as beneficial for farmers who grow a reasonable surplus that
they can sell on the market, poor farmers with small or no surplus
and poor urban consumers will continue to lose out if the price
continues to rise,” the institute said.
Its head, Leo Sebastian, urged governments to
increase investment in agricultural research.
“[The] impact of technologies is a driver of
increased rice production, whether a country exports or imports,”
he said.
“But everybody is saying that investment in
agricultural research is small or limited—and something needs to
be done about this,” Sebastian added.
The Philippines beefing up its supposedly
precarious supply of rice, the Filipinos’ staple, through
importations, according to government critics, is an “ostrich
policy.”
Opposition calls for truth
Rather than continuing with sourcing rice from
abroad, the spokesman of the United Opposition, lawyer Adel Tamano,
on Friday asked the government to map out instead a long-term food
security plan. He said the government is not telling the truth on
the rice situation.
“The government’s claim that there is no
rice crisis but only a price crisis is plain insensitivity to the
plight of the masses. The net effect on the poor [of this claim] is
the same since [the poor] don’t have enough money to buy rice.
Then, even if there is technically no shortage, the poor will still
end up hungry,” Tamano said.
He added that the government should apologize
for failing to prevent rice hoarding, instead of offering
“technical excuses.”
Another member of the political opposition, San
Juan City Mayor Joseph Victor Ejercito, son of former President
Joseph Estrada, said the rice shortage had been caused by “misgovernance.”
Unlike his father, Ejercito added, President Gloria Arroyo has
failed to give top priority to the agricultural sector.
Color-coding rice
Hoarding, according to House Speaker Prospero
Nograles, could be curbed through “color-coding” of government
and commercial rice. His idea is to put food coloring on both
varieties to make it easier for consumers to differentiate them.
Traders hoarding good-quality government rice, which they later pass
off as commercial rice, will then be easily traceable, Nograles
said.
Ensuring that the subsidized rice gets to its
intended beneficiaries, the poor, can be realized through a
“poverty map,” said Manila Rep. Trisha Bonoan-David. Such map,
she said, will enable the government to pinpoint where the National
Food Authority (NFA) rice that it subsidizes at more than P18 per
kilo can be bought by those who can afford it least.
Imports arrive
The government, meanwhile, continues to import
rice. Also on Friday, 395,000 bags of rice from Thailand, Vietnam,
and other countries arrived at Subic Bay Freeport in Zambales
province, north of Manila. This shipment brought to 1,828,186 the
total number of bags that has been unloaded at the freeport since
February this year.
Jaime Juan, Zambales provincial manager of the
NFA, said the latest arrival will be for distribution to Region 2
and Region 3. It is part of the 2.1 million metric tons that the
government plans to import this year, he added.
Rice and sugar imports valued at P25 million
were confiscated by the Bureau of Customs also on Friday. Customs
Commissioner Napoleon Morales said the items found inside container
vans were seized after their owner failed to show a transport permit
from the NFA.
Customs officials said the rice and sugar
imports arrived at Port of Manila and Manila International Container
Port on March 19 from Zamboanga City and Cagayan de Oro City.
-- Ira Karen Apanay, Anthony Vargas, Anthony Bayarong, Sammy
Martin and Jomar Canlas
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