PH Rice: When The Budget Is The Least Of Your Worries!

PH Congressman Leonardo Montemayor shares on Facebook the link to the BusinessMirror article "'Government Has No Money For P10-Billion Rice Fund'" by Cai U Ordinario & Jasper Emmanuel Y Arcalas (10 April 2019, businessmirror.com.ph). The report says:

Farmers may have to wait until the third quarter at the earliest to benefit from a fund that will consist of tariffs from rice imports, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).

That is what NEDA Regional Development Office Assistant Secretary Mercedita A Sombilla is saying. Miss Mercedita is talking about the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund, RCEF, that is supposed to be generated to help PH farmers become Asia-competitive. She is saying there are no funds available right now.

Actually, even if 10 times P10 billion were available right now as the competitiveness fund, PH farmers are still losers! Because the PH government has no Roadmap to Asian Rice Competitiveness.

Without that roadmap, we know where we are going?

In Lewis Carroll's story Alice In Wonderland, here is an exchange:

Cat: Where are you going?
Alice: Which way should I go?
Cat: That depends on where you are going.
Alice: I don’t know.
Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.

Our PH aggie officials are modern-day Alices in Wonderland who don't know where they're going, but they want to get there!

In that same BusinessMirror story, the Federation of Free Farmers, FFF, has "expressed dismay over the apparent lack of source for the P10-billion RCEF." FFF National Manager Raul Q Montemayor says the lack of funds shows that the government is "already shortchanging the farmers." I say, not really! The government is simply not thinking right for the farmers.

I've been writing about it several times already. This is how bad it looks when it comes to production cost of rice:

PH rice P12/kilo
Thai rice P8/kilo
Viet rice P6/kilo.

So, when the rice imports come in, anytime now, who among us Filipinos are going to buy local rice?

PH officials are simply thinking of subsidizing the farmers and, meanwhile, PH farmers are simply waiting for those subsidies. Nobody is doing something about farmer entrepreneurship.

If you want to help PH farmers become competitive in their own country, stop subsidizing them and start educating them how to be entrepreneurs, how to become business-minded, how to cut costs here and there. That's where those P10 billion should go.

Still: Even without any single peso out of those P10 billion for RCEF, even today we can now teach the farmers how to become competitive:

Cut costs of production – use inexpensive but effective fertilizers, and use inexpensive but effective pesticides. And learn to grow rice even with minimal water. In short, turn to organic from your inorganic ways!

How do I know all that? I'm an agriculturist, UP '65; I'm a teacher; I'm a wide reader; I'm the son of a farmer. My father did not know how to cut costs, but I thank God the son rises after the dark night and is sharing the light!517