Security in rice

The global rice market is unique and exceptionally volatile. Of all the rice produced in the world, only 3 percent goes into the market and freely traded. The rest is consumed by the producing countries. Hence, any slight disturbance in production can potentially destroy the world rice market. And that is exactly what's causing the global shortage in rice right now – the drought in Australia, and flooding in India, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.

What we should aim at is to become rice secure, not rice sufficient. If we can domestically produce 90% of our rice requirement, which is about 27,000 metric tons per day, then we need only import 10% of our rice needs. The country can not keep relying on imported rice to boost local supply, as the global supply is tight and prices have been surging in the global market.

In the long term, if we are to become secure in rice, we have to deal with dwindling water resources for irrigation, as well as severe post-harvest loss and wastage in the grains sector.

Water, the common denominator of all food production, is becoming a critical resource. How, then, do we satisfy our rice production needs? We need to make full use of technology. Hybrid rice yields about twice – at the maximum even four times – the average yield of ordinary rice. In short, instead of harvesting 3 tons per hectare of irrigated land, we may be able to harvest as much as 12 tons per hectare through hybrid rice.

Moreover, Philippine agriculture is handicapped by the lack of post-harvest facilities. This has caused tremendous loss and wastage, and has prevented our grains sector from yielding sufficient quantities to meet the demands of our burgeoning population. Plugging the huge post-harvest, even only by half, would dramatically reduce our import dependency ratio.

Lastly, the country's agricultural areas, including prime rice lands, have been shrinking at an alarming pace. We must immediately put to use one million hectares of idle and barely-used lands for agricultural production to augment the area planted with rice. This will supplement the more than one million hectares of fully irrigated lands and the more than 2 million hectares of rain-fed rice areas. Mobilizing these idle lands for full agricultural production will not be expensive and will be worth the cost of development.