CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Farmers from Central Luzon, the country’s traditional rice granary, warned yesterday of a serious rice glut in the market arising from importation.
A joint statement from the Alyansa ng mga Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luson (AMGL) and the Aguman Dareng Maglalautang Capampangan (AMC) said the imported 525,000 bags of rice from Vietnam which arrived at Subic Freeport last January are now flooding the market.
“Traders now use this rice flooding as leverage to even depress farm gate prices of locally produced palay,” the statement said, noting that the importation was part of the government’s commitment to liberalize the agriculture
industry as commitment to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Aquilino Lopez, vice-chairperson of AMGL for external affairs, said “imported rice from Vietnam and other countries are not helping us but are actually undermining our capacity to produce our own rice.”
“If farmers face indebtedness and become landless, lands devoted to cultivating rice are to decline, putting us more dependent on imported rice. Our food security is systematically degraded,” he said.
The groups’ statement said that during pre-WTO period of the data from Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS), imported rice only shared two percent of the total 41 million metric tons rice supply from 1990 to 1994, but jacked up to about 10 percent of 226.8 million metric tons supply from 1995 to 2012.
“It is also noticeable that pre-WTO period rice buffer reached to 21 percent that plunged to only 17 percent since WTO entry. Thus, food security in rice was concretely degraded. The groups said that the continuation of this trend would make the region and the country critically dependent on rice imports,” the statement also noted.
Lopez asked: “Isn’t it dense that our country has the 8th largest rice production in 2009 but also imported the most in the world in 2010?” “The country’s policies and program are weakening our agriculture, thus, no different from putting the people into hunger and misery,” he added.
The statement also lashed at a statement of National Food Authority (NFA) Regional Director Amadeo De Guzman that the Vietnamese rice offloaded at Subic Freeport was to augment the local supply in the region.
“This totally contradicts the agency’s mandate of supposedly promoting and protecting the locally-produced food supply,” it said. It noted that Nueva Ecija province, which contributed nine percent of total palay production in 2013, and Central Luzon which contributed more than 18 percent of production in the same year are not being flooded with imported rice, The statement also criticized the Aquino government for “drumming up rice self-sufficiency when it only means increasing rice imports and totally opposing rice food security.”
“This government abandoned protecting local production and diverting the country to becoming import dependent on food, when an international crisis erupts disrupting importation, we are all going to die of starvation,” Lopez said.
He noted that the government also imported 350,000 metric tons of rice last year as commitment to the WTO.
Lopez said “We should oppose liberalization of agriculture and WTO as they only mean starvation and misery for the people of Central Luzon.
