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IN my previous column, I wrote about the triple whammy of credit
crisis, food crisis, and the energy crisis. The worst of the three
is the food crisis. World cereal stocks are at their lowest in 30
years. And there is little prospect of them being replenished what
with global warming, the shift of agricultural areas to biofuel,
simple negligence and global panic over dwindling food supplies.
In Bangladesh, two floods and a devastating
typhoon further impoverished 60 percent of the poor who spend 60
percent of their income on rice. Workers have gone on strike to
demand higher pay to cope with rising food prices. They see their
government as corrupt and unable to meet the emergency. The army is
effectively in control. That Bangladesh situation, a template for
disaster, could happen here.
Even China, which has grain reserves of 30 to 40
percent of its production or up to 200 million tons, has begun to
worry. Using its vast foreign reserves ($1.5 trillion as of last
count), China last year went on a buying spree for wheat. So now it
has surplus wheat. Manila wanted to buy some of it (to prevent the
local pan de sal from shrinking further), but was refused, a sure
sign that Beijing is starting to panic.
Normally, you need a buffer of 17 to 18 percent
of production to ensure adequate supply. So if you need 12 million
tons of rice, you have to store at least 14 million tons of supply
to guard against speculation, hoarding and disasters like a major
typhoon or flooding. As it is, we don’t even have the 12 million
tons. So the effective shortage is not two million but four million
tons. The government has contracted to import 2.7 million tons.
Despite that, the rice queues have not disappeared. They have
lengthened, widened and broadened. The possibility of riots is now
there, the assurances of the Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro,
notwithstanding. Famine or mass starvation is now staring us in the
face. Food is 55 percent of a Filipino household’s average
income. Last year, per surveys, some 16 million Filipinos said they
missed a meal at least once in the previous three months. That was
when rice was easily available at P18 per kilo.
Rice is available, but at P30 a kilo, a 66
percent increase. Using past experience, the 16 million who said
they missed a meal last year could conceivably swell to 26
million—the numerical equivalent of local mass hunger or
starvation. The World Bank estimates there are one billion people
who live on $1 a day–the universal measure of abject poverty The
Economist estimates some 100 million more will join the ranks of
those in absolute poverty if food prices rise by 20 percent, and
they have. Even those who earn more than $1 a day will be hit hard.
The Economist says the so-called middle class in poor countries will
give up health care and eating meat to be able to eat three meals a
day. The middling poor will pull out their children from school and
stop eating vegetables to be able to eat rice. Those who eat three
meals a day will reduce intake by one or two meals to just one meal
a day. The effect is malnutrition on a large scale. A malnourished
population becomes illiterate and unproductive An illiterate
population is an angry people. And an angry people is bad for
democracy. So rice is literally the future.
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I have often wondered why PLDT Smart has very
few (less than two percent of total subscribers) or post-paid or
business subscribers. Now, I know why. The answer is bad service. I
don’t get the P3,500 I pay monthly as a post-paid Smart
subscriber. At Greenhills Smart, I popped in last week and was made
to get a queue number three times, first to be entertained for my
query for SIM replacement, second to pay my bill, and third to see
if I could be given a complimentary phone for “loyalty.” Twice,
I was asked for an ID by two Smart people who know each other and
are seated only four feet apart, and knew that I have been in the
store for more than 30 minutes. You don’t feel like a VIP for
being loyal and they distrust you and make you fill out all kinds of
documents as if you are applying for a US or Japanese visa.
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