EDITORIAL - Unabated smuggling

If you are guided by the law of supply and demand, the answer to the surging price of a particular commodity is to flood the market with the item. This approach, however, is not as simple as it seems in a country where a large number of people still depend on agriculture.

The complexities have been highlighted in the rice tariffication program, which allowed the “unli” importation of rice. While consumers were glad to see rice retail prices go down, the impact on domestic rice farmers is being expressed by labor leader Leody de Guzman, whose priority programs in case he wins the presidency is to end tariffication.

A similar debate has emerged in the government’s plan to import sugar amid the surge in prices. The price jump as well as soaring costs of flour and other basic ingredients have led to higher prices for bread and noodles, with increases also expected in sweetened beverages and other food items. But sugar farmers are worried about the impact of the planned importation on their livelihoods.

For farmers, government-approved importations are aggravated by the smuggling of agricultural products. Over the weekend, a peasant group lamented that vegetable smuggling has continued unabated since 2007. Last week, farmers from the vegetable-producing province of Benguet staged a protest caravan against the flood of vegetables reportedly smuggled from China.

Complaints about vegetable smuggling have been reported long before 2007, with onions among the favorite items illegally brought into the country. These days, smuggled vegetables that grow better in temperate zones such as carrots, cabbage and cauliflower pose stiff competition for producers in the country’s cool highlands such as Benguet’s capital La Trinidad and Tagaytay.

The government has been trying to entice more Filipinos, especially the youth, to engage in agriculture and boost the country’s food security. But people are deterred by the thought that this entails too much work for too little profit. The competition posed by unabated smuggling of agricultural products adds to the deterrence, apart from undermining the livelihoods of local farming communities.