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Rice on the table: The great equalizer

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More jobs mean more rice on the table.

And it really doesn't matter where you grow rice as long as people can afford to buy it, said Dr. Bruce J. Tolentino, Deputy Director General of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The important thing is to generate more jobs and increase incomes for more people to afford rice, he said in a media briefing hosted by IRRI and SciDev.net on food security and the ASEAN common market.

Rice is just fine coming from Thailand or Vietnam as long as Filipinos have the money to buy what they need, which is about 120 kilograms of rice per person each year, he said. “When incomes go up, then people can eat more rice.”

“The principal yardstick of national food security is improving the nutrition status of all, consumers and farmers alike,” Tolentino said.

Actually in the last four years, rice yields increased faster in the Philippines than in any other country in Southeast Asia, he pointed out.

“When government provides support for science and technology, you can get quick results. Filipino farmers are the fastest takers of new technology,” he said, pointing to the fast adoption of biotechnology corn which resists the corn borer pest.

“Corn areas are increasing rapidly because farmers like the new varieties,” he said. “Hardly anybody now talk about corn shortages. In fact, the Department of Agriculture is talking about corn exports.”

It all boils down to economic policy, Tolentino said, citing for example the choice between increasing support for farmers to access rice technology or giving subsidy to the National Food Authority and putting a lid on the price of NFA rice.

Government usually chooses the NFA because it's a quick fix while investing on research and development takes a longer time. Meaning, government support for science and technology is low, he said.

R&D is just one part of a big picture; there's population growth as well, Tolentino said. The Philippines is about a third larger than Thailand and Vietnam—two of the world's biggest rice producers.

The area where rice is grown and harvested has not kept up with population increases in the Philippines, from about 3.2 million hectares in the 1970s to just 4.7 million hectares (including in irrigated farms where rice is harvested twice or thrice a year) today. In Thailand, rice areas increased from 6.1 million has. to 10.8 million has. and in Vietnam from 4.7 million has. to 7.7 million has.

The Philippines averages 3.8 tons or rice per hectare in 2012, increasing slightly from 1.2 t/ha. in 1961. During the same period, average Thai rice paddy yields increased from 1.7 t/ha. to 2.8 t/ha while the Vietnamese upped yields from 1.9 t/ha. to 5.7 t/ha.

Total paddy production in the Philippines increased from 3.9 million tons in 1961 to 18 million tons in 2012 (today, most of that comes from just one place: Central Luzon, mainly from Nueva Ecija, making it a case of putting rice in just one basket that is prone to typhoons).


However, paddy production is slow when compared to Thailand (from 10.2 million tons to 30.6 million tons) and Vietnam (from 9 million tons to 44.1 million tons). (SciPhil)
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