The rising price of rice is a big burden to the poor nowadays. Young and old, women, men and children suffer long hours in those long queues just to buy 2-3 kilos of rice. One family member, most of the time — the mothers, have to line up again the following day for the same ordeal.
As we witness our poor sisters and brothers standing in line for rice, we see the poor picking up the crumbs that are falling from the table of the rich. At this time when our people are losing their jobs amid low wages, a kilo of rice that is pegged at 40 peso per kilo (around US$1.00) is another round of burden to an already impoverished people. Can the poor families still afford the cost of commercial rice and other basic commodities in the face of Expanded Value Added Tax (E-VAT) imposed by the Arroyo government? EVAT has increased the prices of goods and services. Whether these taxes have reached the poor in the form of services is a big question. To appease the hungry and angry people, the government devised a mechanism to sell cheaper rice but not without lashing the dignity of the already downtrodden. The poor are forced to line up at rolling stores to buy cheaper rice. They have no choice but to walk or spend another pesos for transport to reach the rolling stores. Just so they can buy a kilo of rice at a lower price of 25 to 35 pesos ( less than a dollar).
In the past days, they say that the long queues are getting shorter. But this does not mean that the rice shortage has been addressed. In fact, the supply is getting scarce and the price has gone up to P 60 pesos a kilo in Mindanao. In its effort to placate public protest, the Arroyo administration merely introduced ‘band-aid’ solutions to the crisis. It mobilized the National Food Authority to install
rolling stores in urban poor communities. It also sought the help of the military and the Church in distributing rice to communities. And to show that only the poor can truly avail of the cheaper rice, the government issued “ access cards”( a scheme that gives poor household access to the limited government-subsidized rice). The government even initiated rice bidding among exporters from the neighboring countries, but nobody participated in the bidding. These countries are conscious that food crisis is happening worldwide, they want to ensure that their supply is enough for their local consumption. The rice crisis exposes the government’s failure to ensure food security for its people. It exposes the character of a semi-feudal society. The lands are concentrated in the hands of a few. Rice-producing farmers are neglected. They remain poor and landless, left at the mercy of land grabbers and cartels that overprice their needed farm inputs and underprice their products.
Government puts the blame to ‘international crisis.’ But government is directly accountable for the rice crisis.
Why is it that we are doomed to suffer hunger when the government claimed that the country is heading into economic prosperity? The robust economy is continuously trumpeted in the “Spread the Gloria Virus” advertisement. But what economic growth is this when the reality on the ground is that most of our people are groaning in hunger and poverty?
Over the years, majority of Filipino farmers do not have a land of their own. Land ownership remained in the hands of the few. Farmers have become heavily indebted due to high land rent, high prices of farm inputs and unfair share in the final harvest. Apart from suffering lack of government support, farmers have been evicted from agricultural lands. With the massive land conversion and crop conversion promoted by the government’s adherence to agriculture and trade liberalization under the World Trade Organization, it is not surprising that the Filipino people are now suffering rice crisis and food insecurity in general.
Farmers have a simple answer to the rice crisis:
If only we were not deprived of land, we would have continued to cultivate the land and ensure more than enough rice for every one.
Manna from heaven?
The rice shortage is an issue attached to our stomach because it is an important staple for the Filipinos. Removing the rice on the table of the poor is no different from taking away their life. If you do this to the ta
them eating hamburgers and French fries at McDonalds. With the soaring prices of food items, what can this government do to alleviate the plight of the poor? Will rice importation solve the rice crisis? The same is true about the distribution of access cards to poor families. Can the role of parishes in selling cheaper rice solve the problem?
From the looks of it, the government is not headway in solving the problem. The access cards and installation of more rolling stores are merely band-aid measures. These are temporary relief for the hungry masses. These do not root out the very reasons why we suffer rice shortage today. What we want to see is for the government to ensure a long- term solution to the crisis.
According to KMP (Peasant Movement of the Philippines), the fact that the Arroyo administration is not dismantling the rice cartel only shows that it is not keen on averting the looming food crisis. Worse, this government is not doing anything to stabilize the price of rice and ensure its steady price in the market. The Arroyo administration must abandon its wrongly-focused policies on the agriculture sector - liberalization, privatization and deregulation. Instead of converting the vast tract of lands for commercial use such as subdivisions, malls and resorts, the government must support farmers and increase productivity of agricultural land.
We ask, when will the government adhere to programs that will restore the dignity of farmers whom we call the backbone of society? When will the government heed the farmers’ cry for genuine land reform? ###
ble of the rich, you will find
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