GLOBAL BALITA

No food crisis in Asean: Only in the Philippines
(Herman Tiu Laurel / Infowars / Tribune column for
4-21-2008 MON)

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)