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A United Nations aid official warned Friday that President Gloria
Arroyo’s government may end up feeding Filipinos to save them from
going hungry, as market prices of rice soar.
With prices of rice and wheat spiking in recent
months, World Food Program Country Director Valerie Guarnieri said,
“I think there’s a possibility that the government would have to
feed more people because of rising prices.”
“Price rises mean people who previously were
able to meet their own food needs through the market with their own
income have been sort of pushed over that precipice and are no
longer able to feed their families,” Guarnieri added.
“So we see people who suddenly now would be
eligible for assistance,” she said, adding, “We’re seeing it
in many countries.”
The UN agency now provides food aid to about 1.1
million of the Philippines’ 90 million people.
Guarnieri said the UN was unlikely to ramp up
its food aid to the country immediately since it is considered a
“middle-income country” with lower priority.
She also warned that Manila could be hit in the
pocket by having to boost spending on subsidies just to maintain
current prices of the lowest-quality rice that it sells to the poor.
Guarnieri said rising rice prices and tight
supplies could impact most severely on poor households in the
rebellion-torn southern island of Mindanao because “we’re
looking at people who already spend 70 percent of their income on
food and are having a real struggle meeting their needs.”
“So any increase in the rice price to them is
going to put them in a very difficult situation or make a difficult
situation even worse,” she added.
Globally, Guarnieri said, the UN has appealed to
the food program donors to make them “understand that we’re
going to need more resources just to do what we’re currently
doing.”
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap assured that
the country is not facing a food crisis and that consumers can
expect enough supply of commodities this year, especially the
staple—rice.
“I do not see a food crisis, which means
[there will be] an absence of food [and there will be no] rationing
and food lines,” Yap said Friday.
His assurance came as reports from the Bicol
region said poor folk in Albay province there are complaining of
shortage of government rice from National Food Authority in all
public markets. The residents accused the food agency of failing its
job despite, they said, the government’s supposedly massive rice
importation. Where government rice is available, they added, its
price is beyond their means.
Karen Serrano of barangay (village) Marquez in
Legazpi City, the provincial capital, told The Manila Times that the
prevailing price of rice from the National Food Authority in the
public markets is P28 to P30 per kilo. This price, Serrano said,
cannot possibly be within reach of poor families who are earning
less than a dollar (P41) a day.
Mayor Noel Rosal of Legazpi admitted to The
Times that many poor families in the city already are skipping meals
due to the high price of government rice.
“There are families who could no longer take
their meals [regularly], specifically their children, because their
parents could no longer afford to buy several kilos of rice due to
the high price and lack of supply. This is not a joke. At P30 per
kilo of rice, numerous families might already be suffering from
starvation,” Rosal said.
The residents said the rice shortage had also
been caused by the food authority’s inability to break away from
so-called big-time rice traders who allegedly manipulate the prices
of government and other kinds of rice.
Yap said the Department of Agriculture is
optimistic that the production target of 17.33 million metric tons
of rice for 2008 can be met.
He cited palay-planting schedules and area
coverages for the summer-crop season that are on track and the onset
of the La Niña phenomenon, Yap said, will benefit rice farmers
tending over a million hectares of rain-fed areas nationwide.
Yap added that the production target is
equivalent to a national self-sufficiency level of 92 percent.
He said the government will address pricing by
putting up more bagsakan or drop-off points in urban markets and
more barangay food terminals to ensure access of ordinary consumers
to affordable rice of good quality and other foodstuff.
Because of the weather bureau Pagasa’s
forecast of favorable weather, Yap added, the government hopes that
total harvests would exceed 7 million metric tons in the first
semester, or higher than last year’s output of 6.8 million metric
tons.
The Agriculture department, he said, will expand
areas planted to certified seeds to 600,000 hectares of rain-fed
lowlands and low-yielding irrigated sites, as part of President
Gloria Arroyo’s Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program. Also, it
will implement location-specific intervention measures, such as
providing farmers with Bio-N, zinc sulfate, and other soil
ameliorants.
A third cropping season under the department’s
Quick Turnaround program will cover 100,000 hectares of fully
irrigated areas this year using hybrid and certified seeds, Yap
said. Another 60,000 hectares of restored or newly irrigated areas,
he added, will also be planted to hybrid and inbred seeds.
Earlier, Albert Lim, the president of the
National Federation of Hog Farmers Inc., denied that there is a
shortage of pork in Metro Manila. He said there is “tight”
supply of pork in the country’s premier region because 20 percent
of the backyard hog raisers have given up as a result of high prices
of feeds and corn.
Lim added that 70 percent of hog raisers belong
to the backyard sector and 30 percent to the commercial sector.
He said by mid-2008, the demand for pork will
decrease and that its market price will go down.
Rosal told City Hall’s price monitoring task
force to act on the rice scarcity and high prices of basic goods
that are seriously affecting poor communities in Legazpi.
He personally asked Joe Guevarra, assistant
regional director of the food agency, to allow poor consumers to buy
several kilos of rice from the agency’s regional and provincial
offices at the lowest price possible.
Guevarra agreed. Starting Monday, he said, they
will allow the public to buy a maximum three to five kilos a day.
Rosal said he had received information that
there indeed is a rice shortage in the Bicol region. This shortage,
according to the informant, had been caused by floods and landslides
that destroyed ricelands in the region.
Also earlier, Gov. Joey Salceda of Albay urged
local chief executives to allocate funds for social services to
counter price spikes and to increase food production in their
localities.
He said the price spikes in oil and other prime
commodities would hit and affect the people this month and beyond.
This possibility makes it urgent for the local officials brace for
it.
In Cavite province near the Bicol region, the
National Food Authority there also on Friday assured residents of
enough rice. It also admitted, though, that its price has been
increasing.
Jaime Hadlocon, provincial assistant manager,
told The Times that customer demand can be met as the agency has
30,000 sacks ready for distribution. This supply, he said, can last
for 45 days.
-- Ira Karen Apanay, Rhaydz B. Barcia, Rogelio Limpin and AFP
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