As chronicled by John Markoff in one essay in “The Rise and Fall of the French Revolution (Studies in European History from the Journal of Modern History)” (University of Chicago Press Journals) “ the Great Fear was paranoia in the rural areas, as a political crisis engulfed France in 1789. Rumors began to spread that the King, bandits, merchants, what have you, were going to swoop down on farmers to take their grain. The farmers formed militias; urban residents panicked. The government panicked.
We are experiencing our version of the Great Fear. A vicious cycle involving dramatic moves by the government, magnified by a media out of any really big stories (NBN-ZTE, Spratleys, etc. all fizzled out by Holy Week) and the combination of the two brought out panic combined with opportunism on the part of the public. Its early glimmerings were reported by Bong Austero in his March 24 column, Averting the impending rice shortage.
Yesterday, the Inquirer editorial, Hoarding, pointed to the Great Fear among local governments (For background, see: Davao will hoard rice, and Bumper rice harvest expected in Mindanao and Govs of provinces in Panay say rice enough for Visayas and Panay has enough rice to feed entire Visayas and
My Arab News column for the week is Fixing the Rice Problem Leaving Others Unattended. Since the modern presidency began, presidents have obsessed about rice: and cultivating rice, literally, has been an image eagerly cultivated by our presidents. See The Presidency as Image, in the PCIJ.
In my Arab News column, I pointed to inflation as one of the unattended problems, and to get a better view of that problem, and other related ones, see this analysis in Global Property Guide: Gloomy days ahead for Asia’s housing markets. Two charts from that analysis are particularly relevant:
The in-house economist of Global Property Guide, Prince Christian Cruz, was the guest on my show and he had some interesting things to say. The rising price of oil last year already put pressure on income, but was offset by the appreciation of the Peso. However, with the rise in rice prices, Filipino families have been subjected to a double whammy and thus, rising inflation. See also Gov’t to cut growth target for 2008 Rising food prices to curb GDP expansion.
Government data says the top three expenses of Filipinos are food, transport, and rent (more or less in that order, but food always being at the top, and ranging from 40% to more than 50% of income expenses), so a rise in oil and rice prices bloats the three, and from his perspective (focused on the property market) this will mean families have to consider moving to cheaper accommodations or defaulting on their housing loans; and that’s only from the point of view of the domestic economy. Add to this a downturn, economically, overseas, and the problems increase, as Filipinos overseas have to set aside purchasing homes (which fuels the construction industry) as their families at home have to spend more for food, transport, and rent…
The other week, I asked a worker how prices had been affected since Holy Week. A serving of vegetable viand went from Php15 to Php25, for meat dishes, Php30 to Php40, a cup of rice from Php7 to Php14.
People have had to adjust their grocery budgets, which up to now had been fairly stable for a few years. See Opinionated Banana:
If UN has an emergency food summit, well our Household also had our own emergency food summit. My mother, who’s in charge of the hardcore accounting and shopping shared that before a sack of sinandomeng rice would just cost at around 1,400-1500 pesos, but as soon as the crisis hit the fan, she ended up paying for 2,000++ pesos for a sack. With just a couple of male species and one diabetic in our household, we’re really not dependent on rice. But still, it calls for attention. We would experiment now on mixing food viands with mashed or baked potatoes, which I’m looking forward to, or develop our skills with cooking pasta. Yes, we’d still cook rice, but in smaller quantities now. It may result to healthy and positive effects, just as long as rice is still an option and not a form of deprivation. We’re all willing to adjust.
This leaves less money for the various service-oriented businesses that rely on people having disposable income. So the immediate problem, for now, is it’s not that there’s no rice to be had, but that purchasing rice is more expensive and won’t be going down in costs significantly in the long term. And we aren’t creating the kinds of stable jobs we need.
A backgrounder on where we were, prior to the Rice Problem hogging the headlines.
From Cielito Habito, PDI Talk.ppt and Michael Alba, economic briefing.ppt (see also philippine economic growth revised.pdf” I’ve snipped some slides. The white ones are from Alba, the colored ones, from Habito.
In 2006-2007, both were looking at the growth taking place in the country (being proclaimed as a new Golden Age by the administration, if you remember) and pointed to where it was really taking place, and where it wasn’t:
Alba had been pointing out that productive land was being lost to the booming property market, and what was worse was government wasn’t even properly keeping track of the development. Both he and Habito were also pointing to the dangers of lopsided growth, since the sectors growing weren’t labor-intensive (Habito pointed to the collapse in manufacturing-related jobs) and a fall in domestic investments, which would be magnified by a fall in foreign investments.
See also The Grand Deception by Perry Diaz. He calls the Palace to task for trumpeting its economic record, and how it brushed aside questions concerning the statistics and where the growth was taking place. He also zeroes in on smuggling as one issue that has hounded the administration -and which, I think, explains why public skepticism has hounded its every move in attending to the Rice Problem. In Thads Bentulan’s PPT, there’s a footnote (see the notation with the asterisk, below) where he raises the question of smuggling, because there’s a gap in the official statistics:
This actually came up during the Senate hearings before Holy Week, but the vacation prevented people from focusing on it. The discrepancy was between what the Philippines claimed was the value of its trade with China, and the values China itself declared. The Philippines claimed something like 8 billion dollars in trade while China said the value was 30 billion dollars. Immediately, during the hearing, some senators began asking if the discrepancy wasn’t a sign of smuggling. Although one senator later explained the discrepancy could be a case of arguing apples and oranges: the Philippine figure may be trade with the People’s Republic of China only, while the China figure may be “Greater China” including the PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (and even the Binondo traders) but also revelatory of “technical smuggling.”
As it is, the rise in rice prices has led to demands for salaries to be raised, see Hefty wage hikes to spell economic troubles for RP–bank. Even the Inquirer editorial warned of the consequences of government allowing itself to be stampeded into raising wages: see Immediate need.
Which brings us to my column for today, which is Rice per minute. It discusses Thads Bentulan’s provocative An Analysis of Rice Prices in Three Countries: Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines (as of April 20, 2008) . You can also download his Hyperwage Theory book.
People in business immediately dismissed Bentulan’s proposal: if it were adopted, one person texted me, “jobs will simply disappear.”
Bentulan says the minimum wage for a domestic helper in Hong Kong comes out to 18,637 Pesos per month. Ask yourself what work or position would pay a similar salary in the Philippines. Many people I encounter who are business owners complain that there are lots of jobs available -only, there are no Filipinos qualified to fill those jobs- but you have to wonder, the jobs remaining unfilled (mid-level managers, bookkeepers, etc.) are at salaries that makes it a competitive choice for a qualified person to seek employment overseas.
Moving on to the politics of it.
There is a novel by Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, which appeared in 1990 but has a strangely contemporary ring to its title: “The rice conspiracy: A novel”. What is interesting to me is how students from the UP School of Economics on my show last Tuesday asked if we really had a rice crisis or if it was a politically-manufactured scenario. They are not alone in being suspicious, see The Multiplication Table of The Jester-in-Exile from April 10:
My suspicion is this: the “rice crisis” is a fabrication, a scare tactic to draw attention away from the assaults on the squatter in Malacanang. With the public focused on this apparent rice crisis, the media will spend very little airtime on the motion for reconsideration that the Senate has filed with regard to Neri vs. Senate, on Jun Lozada and his plummetting visibility, on Atty. Harry Roque and the Quedancor issue, and the Magdalo officers’ conviction for coup d’etat, among other things.
Heck, I’m fairly certain that this rice crisis issue will be milked for what it’s worth, and then the public gets blindsided by yet another impeachment complaint decide to shield GMA.
This was tackled by Mon Casiple in Rice politics and governance:
Of course, it has been a policy of the government for sometime to import rice directly as the sole importer. In theory, it is supposed to sell the imported rice to small retailers directly. In practice, it is the cartels — with connivance from corrupt government officials — who divert these into their own control. A variation on this tactic is to substitute imported high-quality rice with local inferior rice.
The connivance — if not the direct hand — of government officials in rice smuggling from NFA warehouses is underscored by the dearth of direct rice smuggling from abroad. Somebody or somebody’s group is making a killing on the supposed “rice crisis” and the expected panic which drives prices still higher.
In the medium- and long-term, there really will be a rice crisis, as well as a general food crisis globally. At the same time, global rice prices will continue to rise as rice-producing countries increasingly curtail and secure the need of their own population. A lot of factors also contribute to this, such as high population growth, slow scientific breakthroughs, climate change, and higher per capita consumption.
However, in the Philippine case, a major factor is the short-sighted government policy definition of food security as consumer-oriented securing “food on the table. This policy contradicts the common-sense notion of securing your staple food through sustainable production. The illogical policy of tolerating population growth when it outstrips resources complements this disastrous rice trader-friendly policy. Failure to complete the land reform program and prevent land conversion schemes of prime agricultural lands also contributed their share to the government’s failure in achieving real food security.
P43 billion is a drop in the bucket and a palliative when seen against the backdrop of governance failure by successive administrations in the rice and food sector. The GMA administration shares some eight years of it.
Rice, rice everywhere — but not enough to eat, says a news article. Ricky Carandang, in Why Rice is So Expensive, says an overlooked factor is manipulation of the Futures Market in foodstuffs:
As all this hot money goes out of the US, fund managers are looking for other places to put their money. And they’re going into commodities. They’ve seen how oil and precious metals have gone up and continue to go up. But with oil and gold hitting record highs, there’s a sense that the upside may be limited so they’ve focused on commodities that they believe could have a greater short term upside. And that means corn, wheat, soy, and rice.
Yes, there are real supply and demand factors driving up rice prices, but one must concede that a big chunk of the increases in the prices of oil, gold, and rice, are due to speculation on the international commodities markets.
As it is, in Cebu, at least, Rice prices start dropping. The decrease in prices being due to decisions by the traders, it seems, and not because of government’s intervention!
Frisco Malabanan, director of the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (Golden Bountiful Harvest) Rice program, said that as of Tuesday, farm gate prices of wet palay in Nueva Ecija have been monitored at around P14 to P14.50 a kilo.
He said that commercially, this farmgate price should translate o about P30 a kilo of milled rice, lower than the current prices, which have been hovering around P32 to P34 a kilo.
Malabanan attributed the low farmgate prices of palay to the decision of traders to stop buying in the meantime.
“This may be a strategy for them to bring down prices of palay,” he said.
Some things on the chart above taken from The Rice Problem site: the wide disparity between the farmers’ price (light green) and what the wholesalers’ sell it for (orange); and the relatively small margins of the retailers (light blue).
The wholesalers, though, also need that wide margin because it represents the inefficient costs of distribution in our infrastructure-challenged country. But it also shows the opportunities for maximizing profits, for example, when NFA Rice is then mixed with commercial rice or repackaged entirely by wholesalers and retailers.
Back in April 9, Philippines Without Borders warned that since government, by its nature, is slow to act, by the time its policies actually start having an effect, it could screw up what should at least be a bonanza for our farmers:
Now, based on Business Mirror reports, its seems Malacanang is simply telling the private sector to import what is allowed under the minimum access volume (MAV)…. Crazy!
The fact is that the MAVs have been there all along and no one dared importing much lately simply because tariff is high (50%). Who would be encouraged to import rice that are already expensive in the world market and pay 50% on top of it, thus making the landed ones so expensive? If I’m the importer, I’ll wait for local prices to really move up the heavens before I even thought about availing of the MAVs. That’s what is happening now.
So the supposed policy pronouncement about “allowing the private sector to import rice” was a bogus one – a deception. Or probably it was real, only that government, as usual, simply backtracked, nay backslided. My goodness! Now, the private sector is saying they will only import rice at zero tariff, and given the government’s very slow decision making process, we might end up having those imported rice landing our shores when the farmers are already harvesting their palay. Some of them has actually started harvesting now. That will be tragedy.
Another matter.
We shouldn’t discount, too, as the effects of people being able to game the system, as smoke points out in Malthus got this one right:
You see, some well-off families have been gaming the system. When you reach a certain income bracket, people eat more often at restaurants than at home. For these people, the rice they buy is mostly for the house-help and the pets. Ironically, in the circles I know, these are also the largest purchasers of cheap rice. With most of these upper-income families employing at least two – up to six – house-help, they are able to buy more at those street side selling points.
First thing they do is they go quite a distance from where they actually live. When they find a selling point, the helpers line up with everyone else, only they are spaced about two-three people apart. Most of the time, they’re not noticed as strangers. But when they are, they just say they’re from so-and-so depressed community and that that place ran out of rice. They then give the sob story about having had to walk or travel far just to find rice. It’s clever, really. This story reinforces the notion that there is a shortage, and sets people a-twitter. In short order, they forget that their are strangers among them.
Once they get their quota of cheap rice, these helpers walk walk walk. Eventually, they all meet up, get in the re-conditioned van they use for going to the market and drive on home.
People would go to localities where NFA rice was being sold, even if they’re not from the area and not necessarily the target market of rice relief -the idea being a habit as old as the Japanese Occupation, which is to hoard when things are cheap and simply pull one over the authorities.
Roving rice-buyers aren’t just agents of the well-off. This is where having many family members -and idle ones- comes in handy: you can line up, anywhere, even far from home; and when supplies are limited per person, multiply the number of persons and you multiply the family’s total share. And the strategy is validated by events: even mentioning that the NFA may be forced to raise prices increases the determination of people to hoard now.
Politically, whether manufactured or not, the Rice Problem affords as many opportunities as it presents risks. See Manila’s Arroyo treads risky path with rice campaign. Amando Doronila takes a dim view, saying that Low credibility bodes ill for Arroyo riding out crisis. I’m not convinced the public mood will sour the way he thinks it will, or could. Definitely, as Mon Casiple says, in Malacañang 2010 hopes, the Palace will be sniffing around for opportunities -or trying to create them, as RG Cruz amplifies in an entry. Or, simply try to move fast to take advantage of any that may arise; more so, if it can claim credit for heading of an emergency. House to call Yap on P250-B plan setting the stage?
The Warrior Lawyer has a trilogy of entries, starting with The Politics of Rice then Rice Crisis Relegates the ZTE Broadband Scandal to the Background and On Corporate Rice Farming and Other Notes on the Rice Crisis . Which brings us to issues raised and some readings.
I. Government agricultural policy
Rice: a policy blind spot says Randy David. On the National Food Authority, see Soaring World Food Prices Exacerbate Challenges Across Asia… Especially in the Philippines in the Asia Foundation blog. See also The Bottom Seed: Notes on the Philippine Rice Crisis by Martin Perez.
See Bohol rice farmers ‘forced to eat camote’:
Catarata said that in planting rice, farmers need to spend for one hectare at least P18,745: P900 for the rice seeds, P6,000 for 14-14-14 fertilizer, P4,900 for urea, P30 for the transport of fertilizer and P500 for chemicals against pests, and P6,415 for labor.
Catarata said that if the P1,080 for thresher and blower and P1,800 for irrigation fee is added, the total rice production cost of P21,625 will be shouldered by the farmer, who is able to harvest only 60 sacks of palay worth P28,800.
Because the farmer has to share one-fourth of his harvest, equivalent to P7,200, to the landlord, he stands to get only P21,600 as gross income. After deducting the production cost, she said, farmers end up with a loss of P25.
But this situation can only be compounded by what Ellen Tordesillas says is a Looming fertilizer shortage.
See also P5M full subsidy for rice farmers and Herrera proposes full subsidy of rice seeds.
II. The World food situation
Earlier, Food crisis grows by Paul Krugman and then from Time.com: No Grain, Big Pain. From the Asia Sentinel, recently, Will Rice Depart from Asia’s Tables? The region’s most important food staple may be going into permanent decline.
See RP may not be able to secure more rice from East Asia.
See Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club limits rice purchases.
III. Biofuels
See Let Them Eat Bio-fuels by Tony Abaya, and Biofuel not to blame for loss of rice lands — senator. He’s right, I think -but there’s the question of corn (and inefficiencies: it’s cheaper for hog raisers in Luzon to import corn from Thailand than to ship it in from Mindanao), which is being allocated for biofuel production.
The Arab News editorial, International Problem, says European farm subsidies have been very successful and advocates some sort of international body to manage subsidies for agriculture on a global scale:
Biofuels are not the root cause of the price hikes; they and the high price of oil are simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. The real villain is the phasing out of subsidies in so many parts of the world at the behest of the IMF and the World Bank. More land has been taken out of food production as a result than any shift to biofuels. It has hit poorer countries particularly hard because they are the ones that have most needed IMF and World Bank support. Without subsidies, farmers in countries such as Ghana or Gabon – West Africa has been particularly affected – could not compete against cheap imports from the big producers, and gave up. But no one realized a crisis was brewing because cheap food imports continued to arrive. It is only now, with prices rocketing, that poorer countries find they do not have enough local producers to fall back on.
Then again, we can focus on growing meat without having to grow animals -see Tastes Like Chicken in Slate.
IV. Population
See Juan Mercado’s look at population from a regional perspective in 2010 dividend. And Manuel Buencamino’s Earth Day blues. Blogger smoke is also in Malthusian mode in C-rice-is.
And finally, a brief survey of the blogosphere:
April 9: see: The Left Click, Arbet Loggins @ Multiply, Life As I Know It and The Unlawyer. A particularly interesting look back at previous rice problems in A Simple Life:
In the slums of Iloilo City, circa middle of 1970s, back when the NFA (National Food Authority) was still known as the NGA (National Grains Authority), “NGA” was synonymous to an inferior variety of rice — dark-grained, 50% broken, and had a chemical-like smell.
Therefore, I am surprised that unscrupulous traders nowadays can repack NFA rice, which retails at P18.25 per kilo, and pass it off as commercial rice, now selling at up to P34 per kilo as of posting time.
As a child, I remember Nanay occasionally taking home with her a brown paper bag containing a ganta (about two and a half kilos) of NGA rice. Those were hard times. Those were the times when Ferdinand Marcos rationed rice to just a few kilos per family.
A few months into the oil-rice crisis of the 1970s, the NGA resorted to rationing rice mixed with corn grits. Although the yellow corn grits-white rice grain mixture looked good, either cooked or uncooked, swallowing it is another matter. The discriminating Ilonggo palate just does not have the tolerance for corn as the staple. We may eat corn during snacks — on the cob, steamed or broiled, or as popcorn, but not when cooked as rice.
I did not remember exactly how long the corn-rice blend lasted in Iloilo, but I can still recall that the Ilonggos did not enthusiastically receive it. We survived and outlasted the rice crisis by subsisting on “binlod” (Tagalog: binlid) — 90 to 100% broken rice grains. Normally, binlod should be chicken feed, but undoubtedly, it fells better on the palate than corn-rice. Binlod is best eaten as “lugaw” or porridge. Sometimes, Nanay would be lucky to obtain some “laon”, which was only slightly better than NGA rice, and we would feel blessed.
Yes, we survived the rice crisis then and we can survive it now.
April 10: see Every man is guilty of the good he did not do…Voltaire, Poolah, Daily Musings, mackybaka! , www.CCLozano.com and Prospect Avenue:
My mom’s having a hard time ordering rice right now. She said the price of rice has risen twice over the week. She’s called all her friends and our relatives. One is selling a sack for 1,500 pesos, our aunt (who owns a stall in a public market) is selling hers for 1,800 pesos. Rumor says that a sack would cost 3,000 pesos in a few week’s time.
I don’t think there is a rice shortage at the moment. People are just getting greedy and hoarding the sacks out of greed and paranoia. It’s mass psychology at work. The rice crisis is a self-fulfilling prophecy that is slowly coming true.
Mom’s thinking of sending our workers out to buy NFA rice. It’s cheaper (18 pesos per kilo versus 35 pesos selling in the market). But you have to line up pretty early in the morning (around 5am) to buy the rice (shop closes at 10am). Each buyer can only buy up to two kilos of rice. There are cops (or soldiers) standing guard, making sure that everyone gets a fair share of the NFA rice.
April 11: see Splice and Dice:
That is the part where a morally bankrupt regime purports to be the moral buttress of the nation. That is the part where a Garcified leadership pretends to wrestle with the liars, cheaters and thieves in this nation when that leadership has nobody else to wrestle other than themselves. That, too, is the part where a gloriafied regime sees everything else as investments, owing largely for its economic eye, while failing to understand the basic difference between what is legal and what is just.
I’ve always believed that what is legal does not necessarily equate with what is just. While we may have laws, and we do have laws, there remains the sweeping thought and feeling that we lack justice. Invoking an executive privilege may be legal, but does it bequeath us any justice? Well beyond all that there is to be truly disappointed about, sanctifying that executive privilege, one which has truly become a privilege in the strictest sense of the word, by the prostitutes of the law corrodes the fists of justice. It’s a case where a distorted defense of a privilege which the constitution does not even explicitly provide tramples upon the written forces of truth and transparency, the gravity of which pins us back to a crisis worse than one plaguing our rice supplies.
“I would rather you tell me how you match the survey  a portrait of how the Filipino poor have defined how they choose the candidate to vote for â€â€to the people getting elected, e.g. the current crop in the Senate and in Congress.” – UP n student
I agree. That survey or study is spotty at best because, on a nationwide basis, the actual electoral results don’t bear out that study. There may be a few places here and there that stand out, but, overall, it’s still the same old story.
Even in Mr. Quezon’s example in Camarines Sur, family dynasties, and politics as usual, still won out. And that scenario was repeated in the majority of places. Why do you think we see the same old names in both houses of congress? I honestly don’t believe that msot of those instiable parasites that we call our political leaders were voted in because people actually believe they are “Makadiyos” or “Tumutupad sa pangako” or “Mapapagkatiwalaan”.
jude, actually bicol’s an interesting case of how dynasties refresh themselves. the big shot was luis villafuerte who hasn’t been getting along with his son, among other reasons, because by all accounts the son is more dyanamic and forward-thinking. if i’m not mistaken they were actually openly at loggerheads for a while.
you would have to look at the enduring dynasties and see why they have endured. sometimes it involves winnowing things through intra-family competition. or its through delivery of services, e.g. the villars in las pinas, the binays in makati, even jv ejercito is proving to be a dynamic mayor, someone was telling me he shows up in the office at 7 am businessmen are rather pleased officials are sent to their offices to attend to government-related paperwork, sparing them time-consuming visits, etc. (jinggoy was a pretty lousy mayor by comparison). and of course there are other areas where the answer’s simpler, still: fraud and terrorism.
Why no price surge in mangoes, bananas and pineapples?
The entire government machinery from DA, DTI, DOF have been beating the drumbeat for the export of our agricultural winners daw. Forget rice and corn we can import it cheaper from outside.
Why can’t Danding try to cerate a cartel for bananas and mangoes like what he tried to do with coconut oil in the seventies with FM.
He has got a massive mango plantation in the South. Why not encourage the eating of banana chips instead of rice. The government helped the Banana King in the South establish his empire…
Why no help for rice farmers. The DA is now getting information or data from the Grain Traders Association and Rice Millers Association of the Philippines. Please note there is no Rice Farmers Association of the Philippines. I wonder why? You have banana farmers groups, sugar farmers groups and mango famers groups.
Look we have chopped down 80% of forrest cover which has affected the water table in the entire country.
Thailand, India, Vietnam and the rest of Indo China are fed by the Himalayan rangesand the moonsoon rains. We have our moonsoom seasons with our typhoon seasons and instead of building catch basins and maintaining forrest cover we sold our timber to the Japanese. Next thing we did was destroy our mangroves and move to fish and prawn farming to supply the chopsticks economies. Mangroves are vital source of food for fish spawning. They also serve as a natural barrier to sea erosion.
That is why our subsistence fisherfolk are running out of fish.
All in the name of a colonial mindset of exporting resources and importing finished goods.
Now we are left to using the goundwater which is limited and fast being depleted for farming as we have destroyed countless rivers in the name of development. No trees and rivers become heavily silted and rainwater becomes a roaring flood that makes most of Central Luzon a catch basin. This is now being repeated in Mindanao. Cebu is stripped bare and its probelms on water supply are well known.
Multiply this model of resource destruction on a big scale and you have a good picture of a country destroying itself.
We have been the authors of our own destiny and you are witnessing simply a portents of things to come when countries destroy their own resources for monetary gain of a few.
It is the money fetish that become a religion. Then we are told that our country is not conducive for rice production due to the extensive use of water resources.
Someone forgot to inform those experts that we did not care to make sure that we maintained and expanded on man made interventions to sustain, preserve and multiply our natural resources to be used for our own purposes.
Now we want to ask for loans to rebuild our forrests.
Do we have time to reverse this major crisis at the same time utilize inorganic fertilizers that will destroy whatever we have of arable land in the long term?
Food, Fire, Water and Air.
I do know that the present royal couple in waiting in the Palace have a basic knowledge in sustainable economic development.
But they can always move to Californaia and enjoy the beauty of San Francisco and marvel at all the natural endownments in that State.
The horses have already left the barn and now the government would like to get actual data on rice production in the country……..
Eh, kasi lahat hula lang pala. Nabisto sila nang si GMA mismo ang nagsabi na ang Pinas daw ay mag iimport kasi kulang ang bigas dito….What was a normal domestic shortage became a lit match on a spreading price inflation in food.
Di lahat nang bansa na may kulang na bigas ay nag-unahan y di mas tumaas ang halaga nang imported.
Yung DA pala walang wala ng totoong data
“Last Saturday evening, Yap held an emergency meeting with rice millers and grains traders to get a better and clearer picture of actual domestic rice production and supply, and thresh out suspicions of hoarding by some millers and traders.”
“Following the three-hour meeting, rice millers and grains traders all over Luzon pledged to provide the Department of Agriculture with data on their actual palay purchases, their milling capacity, the subsequent losses from milling, the cost of milling, transport and distribution, as well as additional profit margin.”
“Joji Co, president of the Philippine Confederation of Grains Association (PhilConGrains), such information would give the government a better chance to stabilize the domestic supply and prices of the staple even during the traditional lean months of July to September.
The rice millers and grains traders sought the dialogue with Yap following what they felt was an indiscriminate crackdown on legal rice millers and grains traders who were being portrayed as rice hoarders or profiteers.”
“Co noted that recent raids of warehouses full of grains have painted a negative image of rice millers and grains traders who were tagged as hoarders.”
“According to Co, a full warehouses does not necessarily mean that the owner is a hoarder. If anything, it is an indication that there is enough grains being stored and that, in fact, there is no rice shortage he added.”
“Over 60 officers and members of (PhilConGrains) assured Yap of a stable supply for the rest of the year.”
“Accompanied by Pangasinan Representative Mark Cojuangco and Robert Estrella of the party-list Abono, the rice millers and grains businessmen also reached an agreement with Yap to work out with the DA and the National Food Authority (NFA) a “pricing mechanism†to keep rice accessible and affordable to ordinary consumers.”
“As a sign of good faith, Yap said the grains traders committed to inform the DA in a week’s time the total volume of rice stocks currently in their possession which they are to unload in the market during the lean months.” Philippine Star, Marianne Go
hvrds,
“Do we have time to reverse this major crisis at the same time utilize inorganic fertilizers that will destroy whatever we have of arable land in the long term?”
of course, all we have left is time and the only constant in this world is Change. Sadly to say, it may not be in our generation. In my province, both candidates were buying votes at the same price. it was rumored that both candidates were complaining because people are getting expensive. lol, it’s now 1000 pesos each. meaning each person will at least receive 2000 pesos.
let me give you a calculation: in my town, there are about 20,000 voters. x 1000 ,that’s 2 million pesos of investment from a mayor. I believe he get paid as salary at $ 30,000 pesos/montly . Now, how could he pay back his initial investment of 2 million. Which department do you think he will cheat? projects proposed? taxes? small business licenses? or a combination of both?
Now multiply all the mayors in the Philippines and consider the pork that will be distributed to each. also consider deductions for management fee from the upper house. how much do you think will get to the end?
Self sufficiency in RICE is always possible. It’s our money system that is not transparent. Politicians expect return of their initial investment at least 12%. So 20% of 2 million,is $400,000 plus salary.
A businessman/ or a politician who use leverage by borrowing money at 12% from friends and elites, will always wanna make sure she/he will gain 20% return or better.
Any solution?
“Rego, those facts you introduce in the context of the present discussion are known as red herrings. What Erap said, who i am and what my previous choices were are not relevant to FPJ and GMA’s policy choices.
I was wrong in voting for Gloria, and the masa were correct. Anyway, Gloria won because of Hello Garci which makes my vote moot and academic. More importantly, I would not have and do not approve of cheating as the way to keep Office because as Randy David said, “Politics is society’s way of producing collectively binding decisions.†and the way of making collectively binding decisions when choosing leaders is through elections. We mess with that process at our peril.”
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cvj,
Thats what you get for starting a childish and irrelivant propostion. which actually a red herring by itself.
It woudl have been better if you write about somebody carrying on FPJs Food security program. Anyone of you favorite opposition figures like Ping Lacosn or Manny Villar, or even Jinngoy since it was actually Erap who push for FPJ candidacy. Since FPJ has no political expereince, almost all of FPJs Decision or ideas musthave been downloade by Erap.
Pero ala eh. You are obviously sowing hatred to anti Gloria crowd.
Or maybe you and your ilk wanted to move for the resurrection of FPJ from his grave to make is food security program become a reality.
So you’re now blaming me for the logical fallacies that you have committed? Isn’t ‘ikaw kasi’ a form of childish behavior?
Anyway, my bringing up FPJ’s food security is not a red herring because Magdiwang was insinuating that there was no alternative path that any other leader could have been taken. I was showing him that, on the contrary, the example of FPJ shows that there was someone who had an alternative policy that emphasized food security so his excuse does not wash.
Yes, i’ve done this already as well in my blog entry last January:
http://www.cvjugo.blogspot.com/2008/01/program-of-government-for-2010-laundry.html
As you can see, Food Security is in my top two concerns.
I have not yet heard any of the mainstream politicians’ response so, in the meantime, we have to support the advocacies of parties that had the foresight to anticipate this years ago like the Anakpawis Party List which was mentioned in the bulatlat article i linked to above (April 26th, 2008 at 1:29 pm). As a start, let’s orient ourselves with the concept of ‘Food Sovereignty’ that commenter Leo advocated in Manolo’s ‘Rice-Self Sufficiency’ thread last September.
Unfortunately for the Rotarians themselves, the 4-Way Test turns out to be ‘Joc only’. I wonder if anyone takes that club seriously.
Food Sovereignty ,food security
is like the two acceptable pronunciations of tomato and potato.
The proponent (Campesina)tries to make it different by limiting food security as having to compensate for lack of food.
Then his principles of:
food a basic human right,agrarian reform,protecting the natural resources,reorganizing food trade,ending globalization of hunger,social peace and democratic control; are not at all new; for all we know a president or a prime minister somewhere in this world have those campaign promises or state of the nation or union addresses, even before The Camposino Way.
Jude,
Aside from the tight monetary policies of IMF,masagana 99 failed because of arrearage(even before the entry of IMF sa picture).
Those arrears happen to be from collateral free loans,it was good in paper ;collaterral free loans with support and supervison from the creditors but still it went haywire and many farmers still defaulted on their loans.
Today, ang mga farmers lubog din sa utang sa traders, in the venture we are exploring( coconut oil mill), we were contemplating of dealing with farmers directly or just deal with the traders, since the situation is most farmers are lubog sa utang we might as well deal with the traders.
Baka me magsabi na naman dyan na elitist yang move,well call it what you want,and if in case you do ,I can do the same.
So far, the most prominent anti elitist proponents in this blog voice out their anti elitism for discussuion purposes only, if not then look who’s talking?
Karl, i agree they are not new and i don’t think anyone is claiming that they are, but it is worth noting that Anakpawis Party List (and like-minded advocates) have been right all along, years ahead of the neoclassical and neo-liberal economists. So perhaps instead of the government trying to kill (or kidnap) them (because they are communist), maybe we should listen to what they have to say since events have proven that they possess the foresight in these matters.
CBJ naman, niloloko mo yata kami..
Why would the exchange rate be 400:1?
What law of economics are you using?
For example, ikaw, you are a billionaire… you give 1 million to your friend… why on earth would the exchange rate change at 400:1? It is merely re-distribution of wealth.
However, that 1 million to your friend, will be meaningful to him (not meaningful to you bec u have a billion and its not doing anything)..
That 1 million will be used by your friend to buy more than rice and tuyo (more than the essential goods) but he can now buy a house (good for the hardware, the carpenters, etc..)
ito ba yong multiplier effect sabi nila?
ngayon, ang effect nyan sa GDP is positive.. (remember spending by consumer increases the GDP)
How on earth would an increase in spending which will increase in GDP will weaken the currency?)
masyadon ka yatang limited as econ 101 mo…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Homegirl, you are assuming that the exchange rate (versus foreign currencies) will remain the same. Using your example, a P300,000 laptop is possible if as a result of multiplying salaries ten times, the peso:dollar exchange rate also is multiplied by ten times e.g. 400 Pesos to 1 US Dollar (as opposed to today’s 40 pesos to 1 US Dollar), which would be the likely outcome. In the above, the dollar value of the laptop remains the same.
If hyperwage theory is correct, why stop at multiplying salaries by ten times? Why not multiply all salaries by one billion so all of us will become multi-billionaires?
I am not against increasing salaries (especially the minimum wage) as there are other reasonable basis for doing so i.e. to stimulate consumer demand. However, salaries and wages cannot get too much ahead of productivity as we would be shooting ourselves in the foot by discouraging investments that would augment our capacity to produce.
I was rather surprised to see cvj resurrect the ghost of FPJ in a discussion on the (supposed?) Rice Shortage. I was equally surprised to hear that FPJ pala had a program on this so good that cvj would use it as a battering ram against Gloria.
I am reminded of the efforts by the then-united Liberal Party to choose a standard bearer to support leading to the 2004 elections. In order to stave off a split between the Roco and Gloria people in the LP, the Party’s National Executive Council (NECO) set forth guidelines and procedures for evaluating the five major Presidentiables of the time.
The reason I’m rather surprised at cvj’s new weapon for use against Gloria is that, if FPJ had such a wonderful program, how come it was never mentioned by the LP leaders who made the report to the NECO? All they told us about their meeting with FPJ was… uh… medyo unprintable. There were lots of laughs, though.
In contrast, if I remember that time correctly, Ping Lacson – with his Powerpoint presentations – merited admiration from the LP delegation. At least daw, it sounded like Ping had an idea what to do.
Or maybe, elitist that I am – sabi nga ni UP N me mga taong kaming mga Atenista una daw papabaril, hehehe – I never deigned to read his platforms. Sorry, cvj, but it was hard to see past the cordon of political sharks around FPJ at the time. As someone who went up against said figures leading to PP2, you can understand my reluctance at taking FPJ seriously.
“It is merely re-distribution of wealth.” – homegirl
lol.. please forgive me.. pero ano ka? grade 3?!
well.. assuming na walang inflation, kasi nga redistribution lang ang mangyayari, cno naman ang magtatrabaho at magpapakapagod para bigyan lang ng pera ung kaibigan ni cvj..
I agree, a billionaire giving 1 million will not necessarily result in the exchange rate deteriorating to 400:1
I agree. In fact, this has been the basis used by traditional economist to justify why wealth distribution is a good idea.
Yes, iyan ang multiplier effect. So far so good.
Because your example of one billionaire giving one million to an individual does not reflect what will actually happen. The Philippines is not made up of one billionaire and one non-billionaire. Plug in more realistic figures in your model, one that reflects the income distribution here in the philippines and work through the numbers and you will see what i mean.
Rob, if you did not even bother to read FPJ’s platform, could you blame anyone else but yourself for not being aware of his prioritization of Food Security? In any case, that info was already available in the web (like the one i referred to above). Unless my memory fails me, even Manolo wrote a column about it. As a Mass Comm grad, shouldn’t you be aware of these channels of information? Didn’t you say you were part of the information elite?
@cvj
perhaps rob stopped listening or reading any of the platforms of government the nominees have presented since it has always been assumed that it is ALL lip service anyway.
Well, cvj, like I said, I couldn’t see past the personalities around him. There was, in my view, a disconnect between the Message and the people around the Messenger and their track records.
And being part of the “Information Elite” is the reason why I didn’t bother reading what was on his website. Anyone can access that channel of information, after all, at least anyone with a Net connection and a PC/laptop/celfone powerful enough.
Being part of the “Info Elite” means having access to channels of information BEYOND that available to Jose Public, hence one’s sometimes different position from what the surveys say is the public stand on an issue.
I also didn’t need to bother with what would obviously be PR in a public website. We in the once-united LP had direct access to the subjects themselves, were engaging them in direct dialog; what for reading stuff PR writers like me would put in a website or fliers designed to convince people to buy the product? I was getting firsthand information already, why bother with the spinned stuff?
the problem with people is that they believe everything written by foreigners with titles attached to their names.
This is an article from BBC written by a professor of Cornell University.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7365798.stm#map
Are there food riots in the Philippines? Does queueing for NFA rice considered as riot?
I’ve e-mailed a query as to when and where the food riots in the Philippines happened. There was no response. Does he even know where the Philippines is?
Were there really food riots in the PHilippines which were not reported in the news which I missed ?
DUH.
^
that only goes to prove how ignorant and equally misinformed the foreigners are with regards to the Philippines and vice versa..
ever ready to exaggerate and practice intellectual ignorance just to get a good news..
me using high fallutin words is an example..
@bencard
are ye listening??? there is nothing wrong with being a lawyer…but clearly a lawyer is not qualified for a DA portfolio unless he has expertise in that field.
atienza is a moron! he should have said “Sorry Madame president, I cannot be DENR secretary, I am not qualified…”
OK, my memory failed me. Manolo did not write the column i was referring to, but he endorsed a column written [from an elitist viewpoint] in Today:
http://www.quezon.ph/36/marathon-eating/
The above shows that Breakfast, lunch, dinner was indeed a centerpiece of FPJ’s platform. It was taken seriously enough by your fellow elitist writer at the Today that he took time to ridicule FPJ for having such a platform. Manolo also took it seriously enough to feature it in his blog, unless of course you believe that our host was also an [unwitting] part of the spin.
As for your exposition (at 3:52pm above) on being part of the “Info Elite”, that is a valuable insider’s view from a card carrying member of the Liberal Party. This will be handy come 2010. Thanks for that.
Sorry, the above is addressed to Rob Ramos.
@bencard
and PS. If you want an example of a non-laywer who is not qualified for his post – Department of Energy under Angelo Reyes. Isa pang moron in his post. He may be a cunning general but what does he know about Energy?? aber? he is just a political appointee.
These portfolios DENR, DA, DoE are crucial posts in times of food and energy shortages.
mlq3,
what makes you say that FPJ didn’t cheat?
anthony, check wikipedia. There’s a fallacy for what you just wrote (at 5:43pm).
Bert,
noted
cvj,
do it for me. please. since you think it will help me greatly.
saka its for you na rin: theres also a fallacy for your repeated and ‘life’ conclusion that gloria cheated solely on the basis of ‘Hello Garci’
for sure you’d find it in wikipedia. chances are, its in the same entry as the one you intend for me.
Nako naman CVJ, mag hanap ka pa ng examples.. ikaw na lang kaya maghanap
Basic math theory yan eh.. Set theory..
One billionaire = set of businesses usually the big ones
one non-billionaire = set of all employees
at hwag kang mag sabi na small business will be wiped out.. bec even the lowest maids will have the purchasing power already… bakit wala bang fish vendor sa singapore, walang bang newspaper vendor sa Japan…
hindi hyperwage theory ito ha.. gamit lang simple common sense…
………..>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Because your example of one billionaire giving one million to an individual does not reflect what will actually happen. The Philippines is not made up of one billionaire and one non-billionaire. Plug in more realistic figures in your model, one that reflects the income distribution here in the philippines and work through the numbers and you will see what i mean.
scalia, i firmly believe he himself did not order any cheating, and did not put any plans in place to cheat, and i’d actually go as far as strongly believing he felt his popularity and ability to connect with the masses made it not a question of cheating, but preventing his being cheated. as for the people around him who certainly have their fair share of knowing how to commit fraud, they lacked the means or the coordination to do so except perhaps in their individual bailiwicks -though i think they may even have been conceited enough to think they’d swamp aside those problems in the manner that estrada’s victory was massive enough to make cheating impossible in 1998.
by the time they realized it would be close race, they couldn’t mobilize cheating even if they wanted -and the palace was far ahead in that game.
you have to credit fpj with running, on his part, a clean campaign. his critics never give him enough credit (his wife, too) for actually calming his supporters when they lost in 2004 and when the hello garci issue broke in 2005.
homegirl, even within the same approach, the outcome is dependent on the inputs, specifically, (1) the income of those giving the salary, (2) the amount to be given to the hyperwage recipients, (3) the number of givers (i.e. employers) and (4) the number of recipients (i.e. maids). I’m asking if you can give something more reflective of our actual situation than your 1 billionaire giving 1 million to another person? Also, in your proposal, is it necessary for the maid to be paid by the employer or can the salary for the maid come from someone else (i.e. the government or another rich billionaire)?
“the problem with people is that they believe everything written by foreigners with titles attached to their names.”-The Feline
Now, now, felines are known for their discriminating taste for food, that’s why they’re not prone to poisoning.
Some feline, specially one who is very pre-occupied and up-to-date in global news, sometimes can be also very discriminating in what news to believe.
The problem , it seems, is that news from Honduras, or Haiti, is more credible than domestic news, even if headlines in the local news also showed heavily-armed soldiers guarding rice queues.
“And the UN was not about talking the PHilippines. It is talking about HOnduras where a big platoon of military and police guards the government for fear of riot.”-The Cat
Rice crisis in our country is known to have the highest probability of occurence. ( read Manolo’s agriculture- growth for whom- 4rth quarter of 2006) This data was an obvious domestic risk. Identifying risk can be the basis of creating an effective operational procedure that must be prioritize and provided budget. Our leaders also may lack the identification ability or simply, market speculation for their own short term gains. The surplus in our GDP for the past 2-3 years will not be enough to finance the upcoming risk and liabilities that our leaders have made.
So who is to blame? That data was 2006. Our farmers could have been harvesting and even investing by now. Profit from oversupply could have balance deficits from oil and other expenses in keeping the farm.
Easy said than done but it remains obvious that current administration remain to practice what the previous administration has been practicing. I also have a feeling that future administration cannot perform the same because of accumulating and increasing public debts.
the buying of votes example will further motivate the upper and lower house to work not for the benefit of our people but to get their initial investment back. The main reason that they are also highly motivated because all of them know that financial transactions are the least subject exposed by the media.
to homegirl: The barrier to HyperWage is not on the demand-side (the ones who can use the pay raise); the barrier is on the supply, the ones-who-will-have-to-pay. The argument against HyperWage is “hindi ko kaya, hindi iyan ang budget ko!”. And even those who don’t have to pay out of their pockets — governors and mayors — are not doing their version of HyperWage. Evidence, no one has ordered to HyperWage with a P2,000 raise the salaries of their government workers who earn less than P20,000 a month.
This made my otherwise boring, day. Mwahaha
Baka yon encrusted ng diamond.
mwahaha.
go girl. i am entertained.
“actually, BrianB, I would rather you tell me how you match the survey  a portrait of how the Filipino poor have defined how they choose the candidate to vote for â€â€to the people getting elected, e.g. the current crop in the Senate and in Congress.
April 28th, 2008 at 8:33 am”
UP n,
Cheating, lack of choices, marketing… You repeat a falsehood often enough and it becomes true…
Here is a cut-and-paste:
….”Everyone is out there protecting their own right now,” said Joachim von Braun, director general of the District-based International Food Policy Research Institute. “And that isn’t the way globalization is meant to work.”
All around, food-producing countries are barring the doors to foreign trade. Rice prices shot to a record high after Indonesia stopped its farmers from selling the grain abroad. While its farmers and ranchers want to take advantage of the high prices that Europe and Japan want to pay for their grain and meat, the Argentine government raised soybean and sunflower export taxes to as much as 44 percent to halt the food outflow. Russia has quadrupled wheat-export taxes to 40 percent. Kazakhstan, one of the world’s biggest wheat exporters, halted foreign sales altogether.
At the same time, import-dependent countries that can afford the higher prices are hoarding. Wealthy Singapore is stockpiling rice. Malaysia is creating a new government agency to stockpile foodstuffs.
And does anyone have more details on the lease of some one million hectares of Philippine land to China’s Jilin Fuhua Agricultural Science and Technology Development Co., Ltd. (Fuhua Co.)?
I would hope that the lease requires China/Fuhua Co to turn over 5% of the farm produce to the Philippines. AND, in case of food emergencies, that the Philippines gets 20% of the farm-produce.
‘import-dependent countries that can afford the higher prices are hoarding.’ -UP n Student
Pagcor should spend part of its earnings to stockpile foodstuffs. Rice is right!
The economist-wannabe should know that pricing of the product does not only consider the inflation index.
Prices of high tech products tend to decline in the later years of the product life because:
1. The research and development costs spent for the product
must have been already fully amortized. Some companies amortize the costs within 5 years.
2. as innovations are introduced, more efficient production lessen the overhead
3. promo for the launching of the products are usually higher during the early years.
So the laptop that i bought for $3,000 several years ago, can now be bought for less than $1,000.
What makes the price higher is because of the new features they introduce in the product. the inflation is just a tiny percentage of the price.
DUH.
It is not only Lito Lapid who does not undertand the basic financial data. Most of the legislators don’t.
It is not their function to understand and analyze financial data. They have the budget to hire staff that will do this for them. That’s the reason why these congressmen, senators have their staff which should be composed of people who have different fields of specialization.
The function of the lawmaker is to make the recommendations and research output into motions by sponsoring the legislations.
The sad fact is that most of the staff are relatives and political supporters whose qualifications are blood and polical affiliations.
But even those who understand the basic financial data do not make a good lawmaker.
Will you ?
Ca t (at 9:40pm), as i told homegirl, the increase is in peso price of the laptop would be due to the deterioration in the exchange rate i.e. from 40 pesos to 1 dollar to 400 pesos to 1 dollar. The dollar price remains the same. (I am assuming that the laptop is imported.)
GRAIN (an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the area of sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity) describes the Memo-of-Understanding between GMA administration and China/Fuqua as … a US$3.83-billion deal with the Fuhua Group to set aside over 1 million hectares of lands for the production of ethanol feedstocks for export to China.
The project is for energy-security, not food-security. The ethanol feedstocks are intended for China.
—————-
GRAIN also reports of a US$1-billion biofuel deal with Biogreen Energy (Malaysia) for an agrofuel refinery and 1 million hectare jatropha plantation, as well as a US$1.3-billion deal with NRG Chemical Engineering Pte (UK), for the construction of a biodiesel refinery and two ethanol distilleries, and a US$600-million investment in jatropha plantations, which will cover over 1 million hectares, mainly in Palawan and Mindanao.
The Palawan/jatropha plantation deal seems to be continuation of a new practice — tropical forests are being cleared for the planting of jatropha.
…continuation of a growing practice… tropical forests being cleared
The cat.
“It is not only Lito Lapid who does not undertand the basic financial data. Most of the legislators don’t.
It is not their function to understand and analyze financial data. They have the budget to hire staff that will do this for them. That’s the reason why these congressmen, senators have their staff which should be composed of people who have different fields of specialization.”
In order to hire the right staff, the manager must also understand it. How could he manage if he doesn’t have a degree in management…It is still part of his duty.
Asking me if I can manage?
you bet. I can… it’s my skills,my experience, my educational background. but sadly to say. I’m not interested to work in an environment where I will be sorrounded with corrupt people and secondly , politicians in the Philippines does not make good money unless corrupt.I cannot live a life like that.
laptop issue: google search price elasticity of demand, new product innovations and competitions.
leytenian: None of the managers I have reported to, and none of the managers who have reported to me, have degrees in management.