Bukbok rice

Last week I bought my usual variety of rice from the usual outlet, and was shocked to find out that the cost of a “cavan” or 50 kilos had jumped by nearly P500 from last month’s price. All the other commercial rice varieties showed similar hefty price increases.

At least the rice I bought didn’t have a weevil or bukbok infestation. With a price surge like that, I’m tempted to join the calls for the resignation of Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol. Before joining the call, however, I was ready to hear him out in our Cignal TV program “The Chiefs” on One News.

His first clarification is that rice is under the jurisdiction of the National Food Authority, which is NOT under his department, but under the NFA Council, a body whose members include the government’s economic managers. (The buzz is that several of the economic managers scoff at Piñol and think he has loopy ideas.) So it’s unfair, Piñol said, to make him resign “for the sins of my neighbor.”  

The odd arrangement was carried out in 2014, when the NFA, National Irrigation Administration, Philippine Coconut Authority and Fertilizer and Pesticides Authority were taken out of the Department of Agriculture by then president Noynoy Aquino. In the first week of Duterte’s presidency, as requested by Piñol, the DA got back the NIA, PCA and FPA, but not the NFA.

Piñol told me that when Duterte wanted to return the NFA to the DA as previously announced, he said he was open to it, but only if he wouldn’t get involved in rice importation. The move didn’t push through.

The NFA was spun out of the National Grains Authority through a presidential decree issued by dictator Ferdinand Marcos on Jan. 14, 1981. Piñol said it is the only trading agency in this country recognized by the World Trade Organization, but it hasn’t taken advantage of this special status. As indicated by the name change, the NFA is supposed to be a trading agency covering a wide range of food commodities. Instead it has focused on rice, including its periodic importation.

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Piñol’s second clarification is that he never said to let the people eat rice with bukbok, or that he himself would eat the bukbok. What he said, he stressed, was that weevils are pretty common in rice and other grains, and a couple of bukboks do not render the rice inedible as long as the grains are properly washed and cooked.

Although the NFA is not under him, Piñol keeps abreast of developments in rice production, being the secretary of agriculture and a farm owner himself. He stresses that “there is no rice shortage, but we are not rice self-sufficient.”

The country, he said, had a record high rice harvest last year, and barring powerful typhoons and flooding, he sees another bumper harvest later this year.

So if there is no shortage, why have rice prices soared and we are importing the staple, to the dismay of local farmers?

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Piñol blames a “miscue” arising from the feud between the heads of the NFA and NFA Council. The country, he explained, must maintain a buffer rice stock good for over a month. The buffer is usually imported, mostly from Vietnam and Thailand. This year, the importation was delayed by five months because of the feud.

As NFA rice stocks were depleted and single purchases were limited, regular consumers of NFA rice were forced to turn to pricier commercial rice. That kind of situation is vulnerable to price manipulation. Some dealers held on to their rice stocks, pushing prices further up, he explained.

It’s a different story, Piñol stressed, in the Zambasulta area – Zamboanga, Batanes, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi – which have run out of rice. People in these areas have a long tradition of trading with Sabah, with no need for tariffs.

We call that smuggling. Piñol presumes that when President Duterte went to Malaysia in July to congratulate Mahathir Mohamad on his comeback as prime minister, Duterte sought a stop to the smuggling.

The smuggled rice, however, was so much cheaper that the Zambasulta area now produces only 10 percent of its rice needs. Mahathir stopped the smuggling, all right – but the supply of rice ran out.

Duterte deployed to the area not the NFA chief but Piñol. After meeting with the rice smugglers, Piñol’s proposal to stabilize the supply was to turn the traditional rice trading practices into legitimate operations, with the payment of proper tariffs and subject to normal importation rules.

Something got lost in translation, however, and it came out as if he was proposing the legalization of rice smuggling. Yesterday, Duterte said, understandably, that there was no way he would allow this.

Piñol stressed that legal smuggling is an oxymoron. His proposal is for the smugglers to turn into legit traders and importers.

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The long-term answer to our woes is to boost the country’s rice production sufficiently if not to make the Philippines an exporter, then at least to ensure that the country will not be dependent on importation, which makes the importer vulnerable to profiteering and price manipulation.

This happened during the rice crisis in 2008, Piñol said, when the country had to pay $1,000 per metric ton of imported rice. I remember subsequent reports of rice rotting and being infested with bukbok in NFA warehouses due to over-importation.

Piñol recalled that when he took over the DA on July 6, 2016, he proposed a “rice roadmap” crafted out of the input of outstanding rice farmers. The roadmap incorporated what they said was the secret of their high production: a combination of good seeds (hybrid and inbred), sufficient irrigation, fertilization, mechanized operations, and access to credit.

Piñol proposed a budget of P60 billion for the roadmap, which he hoped would increase rice production to meet 95 percent of national demand – up from the current 93 percent – by 2022.

The funding was never acted upon. Instead, the DA saw its appropriation slashed from P64 billion in 2016 to P49 billion next year under the cash-based budgeting.

These days, senators are warning of a food crisis by 2019. Duterte is threatening to sic his soldiers and cops on private warehouses where rice stocks are suspected to be hoarded.

While Piñol warns of a possible tighter supply next year as China is expected to ramp up its imports, he also said there could be relief in sight for Pinoy consumers before yearend.

For now, however, colleagues tell me the rice portions in their favorite fastfood outlets appear to be shrinking. I don’t think it’s just their imagination.