BULLETIN OPINION BY ED ANGARA: LESSONS LEARNED, MORE CRITICAL THAN EVER
MANILA, MARCH 8, 2011 (BULLETIN) By SEN. EDGARDO J. ANGARA – The world was hit by a twofold blow back in 2008 when skyrocketing global food prices resulted in a full-blown food crisis that intensified the worldwide economic recession.
Rice, our staple food, was selling for at least P35 a kilo in Luzon and as much as P51 per kilo in Mindanao. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said that domestic rice prices shot up by 40 percent at that time, and meat by 30 percent.
We saw how painful the consequences were on majority of Filipinos who devote about 60 percent of their household expenditure on food, half of which is spent on rice.
Numerous studies afterward show that Filipinos coped with the crisis by significantly cutting back on the quantity and quality of their food intake. People made do with what they had. In this case, that meant cheaper and less nutritious food and reduced number of meals.
This came with grave consequences.
Malnutrition poses a clear and present danger to human development, contributing to infant, child, and maternal morbidity, higher mortality, reduced productivity, and diminished learning capacity.
Indeed, overall hunger reached a record high of 23.7 percent, or an estimated 4.3 million households, by December, 2008, based on the Social Weather Survey. Both moderate and severe hunger also peaked, indicating the pervasive impact of the food crisis.
Higher food prices similarly worsened poverty. A study by the Asian Development Bank shows that an increase in domestic food prices of 10 percent, 20 percent, and 30 percent would enlarge the number of poor people by 2.72 million, 5.65 million, and 8.85 million, respectively.
This was far from being merely hypothetical. Official poverty statistics show that while our real Gross Domestic Product averaged 4.3 percent from 2006 to 2009 – which was higher than population growth – poverty incidence kept rising. Approximately 24.9 percent of the population was poor in 2003. By 2009, this was up to 26.5 percent.
The World Bank recently said that food price inflation in our country has been "muted" compared with the rest of the region. It added that a replication of the 2008 food crisis is not very likely, though prices will rise moderately.
Does this mean we have done a better job at averting a food crisis? Not in the least. We have kept a business as usual attitude in dealing with agriculture.
Domestic rice production in 2010 was only 1.5 percent lower than in 2009 at 16.02 million metric tons in spite of a drought. But we have yet to be fully rice-secure as we continue to import at least 10 percent of our needs.
Moreover, the price of rice produced in our own soils is markedly higher than those we import from Thailand and Vietnam. According to the World Bank, the wholesale price of rice in the Philippines is 57 percent to 81 percent higher than international prices.
In addition, we are still vulnerable to extreme weather events, like typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, that could wipe out our harvests any time. We remain defenseless to international oil price volatility, as we import about 80 percent of our oil requirements from the Middle East.
There are even a number of things in our control which we have failed to do: adequately invest in agricultural infrastructure, research and development, and climate-smart practices, as well as enforce the Agri-Agra Law that guarantees credit for our farmers.
Unless we make deep and wide structural reforms sustained over the long term, we will always remain where we are now – at the mercy of shocks, foolishly comforting ourselves that, at least, things were not as bad as they were the last time.
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Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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