Susan’s Notes
By Susan Palmes Dennis
ROCKINGHAM, North Carolina—By now, a lot of Pinoys back home continue to complain about the price of rice per kilo which went up contrary to President Bongbong Marcos Jr.’s pledge to reduce it to P20 per kilo which I consider to be a fanciful, even ludicrous promise.
Ludicrous in the sense that I’ve never in all my years as a practicing media professional ever saw a sitting president fulfill his or her promise to lower prices of basic commodities and sustain that promise for the duration of his or her term. Heck, even the late president Corazon Aquino failed to lower the price of galunggong (round scad) during her time in the 80s so what’s the assurance that PBBM’s pledge to lower the price of rice result in a different outcome?
But let’s start this piece first with my own personal recollection of what rice meant to me growing up in the small town of Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental province in northern Mindanao, Philippines. Back then, I ate what was called ‘kalimbugas’ or milled corn and in fact I remembered that I was sent on errands by my mother to have corn milled at the ‘galingan’ or rice mill of the late Iyo Lino Nabong (father of my classmate Tata Nabong Gervacio).
Rice or the milled variety as Filipinos buy it from their convenience stores, public markets and department stores was a luxury at our home then. It’s eaten only during fiestas and All Saints Day in our household. I couldn’t remember when my family started eating milled rice then. Even now, rice continues its predominant appearance in fiestas along with lechon (roasted pig) and other native dishes.
I was reunited with ‘kalimbugas’ but only the more refined variety when I arrived in the US almost 14 years ago when the first breakfast I had was grits. In the American South, grits are cooked as porridge—which we homegrown Filipinos describe as lugaw or congee/porridge—and often served with either boiled/stir fried shrimp or bacon and eggs.
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Fast forward to modern times and the rice that Pinoys always considered to be part and parcel of their diet is slowly becoming just what my household back then in Tagoloan town considered rice to be which is a luxury. Not that the situation as it stands now is totally irreversible but if we go by the official Department of Agriculture (DA) stand, lowering the price to PBBM’s target of P20 is difficult.
A lot of factors were cited by DA officials during a recent congressional hearing as to why this is so but based on what I read in the Inquirer,, the oft cited reason was external factors that were beyond their department’s control like international farm gate prices of palay or unhusked rice which they said have fluctuated upwards over time.
What was left unsaid obviously was the sheer influence and control waged by the rice cartel/s in the country’s rice industry and how middlemen or those that trade between the farmers and the government, traders, distributors and buyers continue their sheer manipulation of rice prices in the market. That to me and other lay persons is how and why the price of rice will not go down to P20 per kilo for the average Filipino.
To this day, the DA had yet to explain fully to the public how the overall system of rice and other basic essential agricultural commodities like sugar and what not are produced, then sold and distributed to the market. It’s in the negotiations between the farmers and the people who sell the rice to the market that the prices get agreed on and pegged for sale to the public and not just ‘international farm gate prices.’
As the popular perception goes—and the DA can do all the PR somersaulting they want and the public won’t believe any of their drivel—the farmers will be forced to sell cheap based on the demand of the middle men who will then sell it to jacked up prices to the market. Again, going by popular perception, the prices get jacked up further when the distributors and suppliers decide to hoard their supplies.
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Through hoarding, the rice cartel forces the government to import rice from other countries specifically those who sent their best and brightest to learn from the Pinoys how to produce rice or so the sad tale is often circulated to the public to the point of collective nausea. That they can become self sufficient in rice while the Philippines cannot is a mystery that this rice cartel and those unscrupulous few that benefit from this dismal and abominable setup doesn’t want the public to solve.
It is precisely this setup, this grossly inequitable and unjust setup that continually feeds the communist movement in the country and fuels their enticement of farmers to join their ranks in the hills for a revolution that they continue to dream to this day. One need not wonder why this movement still exists given the monopolies that persist in the country which have manipulated Pinoys time and again.
Even with the death of their founder, the communist movement still had their most hardened loyalists who use the rice cartel and other monopolies to justify their overthrow of the present government system regardless of how antiquated and even more ruthless their political ideology is. We should never have to reach that point where government should nationalize everything, even rice production.
Problem is, the cartel—and yes I’m blaming them along with the corrupt government officials both elected and appointed that conspire with them—continue to influence and dictate how the price of rice is sold to the public. Is it too much to ask both the national and local governments to do everything in their power to empower the farmers and totally eliminate the middle men or at least those opportunistic middle men from the whole setup so there’s a greater chance that rice prices will indeed be sold cheap to the public?
By empowering farmers, again I don’t mean total government interference. Just strong political will to enforce regulatory mechanisms that will prevent these manipulators from monopolizing the market. Price controls is but a temporary band aid solution when what the public wants is a steady, cheap supply of rice that can be produced at home for them. That’s the bottomline which the national government to this day fails to deliver to their constituents.
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PS: To our Kagay-anon friends, an advanced happy fiesta greeting from myself and my family both here and other parts of the globe. Yes, I can expect rice to be served in many a table of every Kagay-anon even if the price of rice remains high though there will be other dishes served like the quintessential lechon to be washed down by local liquor—never mind the resulting high blood pressure the day after.
Speaking of which, maybe it’s high time that more Pinoys or ideally all Pinoys should diversify their diet to include bread and pasta to complement their viands or ulam. That way, they dictate they can influence the price of rice in the market. If the rice cartel see that more Pinoys eat smaller portions of rice they may be compelled to sell rice at a cheaper price.
This is just a thought. In fact the government should intensify their existing campaign to encourage diversification of the national diet to include sweet potatoes and maybe even saba bananas. Anything to get back at and depower the rice cartel and their minions.
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