No food crisis in Asean: Only in the Philippines

INFOWARS
Herman Tiu Laurel
4/21/2008



The furor over the "global food crisis" is all over the world's media, but in Asia and Asean, do we see any panicky country other than the Philippines? China, India and Pakistan, the three most populous Asian continental nations, have limited their exports and secured their reserves. Take note of the word "reserves," that is, buffer stocks of their own and not imported. Indonesia, with the largest population in Asean, has also stopped its rice exports; likewise, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. The Philippines is the only one desperately buying from anyone still willing to export. So is there anyone else in Asia and Asean facing rice shortage? This is one time the quip "Only in the Philippines" truly applies. We should ponder this uniquely Philippine predicament for the fate of future Filipino children depends on it.

That emaciated child's face could soon be the eye-bulging one that we used to associate only with African famine. My generation associated that vivid picture of absolute hunger with Biafra during its short civil war with Nigeria while today's generation sees it in pictures of Somalia, Sudan, Darfur, etc.--all in Africa. That picture could be the Philippines a decade from now, as I have written forebodingly about for years. I describe the Philippines' precipitous fall into this situation as "Africanization," a term used to describe the dire poverty in Africa but also implying a deliberate and systematic push of a country into socio-economic collapse--a destruction by Western imperialism and neo-colonialism.

Regular readers of my column over the years will remember that I've often warned of this inevitable "Africanization" of the Philippines under the continuing predatory exploitation of the IMF-WB, its local elite (read, Makati Business Club) and their political patsies (pawns). For years, I have been trying to spread the use of the term to instill a sense of urgency over this crisis. Last week, I heard over AM radio someone alluding to Africa in describing the rice crisis unfolding today. Karen Davila was saying (in Filipino), "This food crisis looks like what we see happening in Africa." If anything good has come out of this rice and food crisis in the Philippines, it is that people are beginning to think more deeply about the problem.

The more enlightened and concerned among Filipinos have long seen this crisis brewing; this columnist is not the only one equipped with foresight. One fellow I was reminded of is Dr. Filomeno Sta. Ana III, who supported Edsa II (but now feeling like an "Edsa Dork" I am told), because he had a six-point program addressing agricultural modernization. President Joseph E. Estrada, he should be glad to note, started an annual awards program for the top three provinces that attained the highest increases in agricultural productivity: P 100-M, P 50-M and P 10-M for top, second and third placers; reflecting his awareness of the need for raising productivity. Estrada's appointment of Dr. William Dar, now International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid Tropics (ICRIST) head, also gave hope for real modernization, but was cut short.

The tasks in righting our agricultural wrongs to achieve rice and food security are no longer rocket science. First, it should be clear to everyone that the "policy of importation" to ensure "availability" of rice is an utterly failed policy. In a crunch, every food and rice exporting country will hedge and hoard their stocks to ensure domestic availability and local social stability before exporting for other countries' needs. Second, dependence on the "market" for incentives for production is an utter farce as even the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization Latin America chief denounced market speculators for the rise in food prices. National food policy (supply and production management) is a function of State and government with food self-sufficiency as primary aim.

The State and government uses all means--policy and planning, budgetary, financial, and technological measures, among others at its disposal to ensure adequate food at all times, at prices afforded by even those in the lowest rung of the economic ladder. The past-Edsa governments led by Cory Aquino did not put food self-sufficiency among their highest priorities in either policy or planning. The Cory Carp law stipulating that 75% of its budget for agrarian infrastructure (which includes irrigation) be sourced from Official Development Funds, foreign donations and whatever recovered Marcos wealth put our agricultural development at the mercy of external funding sources and abdicated the primary role of the State.

The Arroyo regime, short in everything including ideas for solving the rice crisis in the short and long term, also has no answers. The P 50-B emergency expenditure to go to rice retail subsidy should have been allocated to infrastructure and incentives years ago; ditto the Joc-Joc Bolante "fertilizer funds," which too many have written about. Gloria won't be around long enough to oversee the final solution to the rice and food crisis problem; this crisis is her final Waterloo. There are no short fixes for the problem and the tragedy is Gloria cannot even start to focus on initiating the solutions as her political survival needs comes before anything else. Talk of her "con-con" is again rife. With the Supreme Court numbers now firmly on her side, she can ram it through and damn what the people think about it.

Last but not least of the fundamental challenges in the food policy of the Philippines is our foreign policy. So long as the people cannot throw off the yoke of mendicant thinking and continue to follow IMF-WB-ADB and US-British impositions, we will never be allowed food self-sufficiency. It's their method of controlling us. Food dependency is a basic strategy of the West, and the Bush initiative for bio-fuels is not about fuel sources but about contracting food supply and boosting Cargill and Monsanto profits. All other Asian and Asean countries are resisting these Western shackles--and this is why the food crisis is "Only in the Philippines." Nationalism, with a nationalist and protectionist national development strategy, is the only effective response and durable solution.

(Tune in to 1098AM for "Kape't Kamulatan, Kabansa," every Mon. to Fri., 8:30 to 9:00am, and "Suló ng Pilipino" every M-W-F, 6:00 to 7:00pm)