LAST time around, I wrote about the pathetic state of Philippine agriculture, particularly rice farming, and hoped that the Department of Agriculture’s plan to declare a state of food emergency on rice was meant to really address food security or at least draw attention to the sad state of our agriculture.
But pathetic even more was the DA’s declaration under Department Circular No. 3 issued on February 3.
Although titled “Declaration of Food Security Emergency on Rice due to Extraordinary Increases in Prices,” the circular has nothing to do with food security—or rice security to be more precise.
The circular betrays the DA’s shallow understanding of food security—by equating it simply with price and price increases.
In the words of Secretary Francisco P. Tiu Laurel Jr., the emergency declaration allows [the government] to release rice buffer stocks held by the National Food Authority to stabilize prices and ensure that rice, a staple food for millions of Filipinos, remains accessible to consumers.
In other words, it is not “rice security” that the DA is trying to address—just “price security.”
But we can hardly fault the DA for its shallow approach to addressing our “rice insecurity.” Because that’s what the law actually provides.
Republic Act No. 12078, the amendment to the Rice Tariffication Law, authorizes the Agriculture Secretary to declare a food security emergency on rice in response to extraordinary price increases or inadequate supply. By doing so, the DA chief can direct the NFA, which is legally restricted from selling rice directly to the public, to release buffer stocks to government agencies, local government units, and the KADIWA ng Pangulo program. The action seeks to protect consumers from further price hikes.
The problem is, with barely 300,000 tons of rice in its warehouses, the NFA hardly makes a dent in rice supply and consumption.
Filipinos consume about 17 million metric tons of rice every year, out of which 4.7 million tons are imported.
Go figure out how the 150,000 tons that the NFA intends to release in the next six months can affect the supply and price of rice.
The 1996 World Food Summit defined food security as the state “when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”
For food security to be met, all its four dimensions must be fulfilled at the same time. These are:
Physical availability of food: This concerns supply and is determined by the level of production stocks and net trade (meaning whether you are importing or exporting food).
Economic and physical access to food: Adequate supply alone does not guarantee food security at the household level. An adequate supply of food at the national or international level does not in itself guarantee household-level food security. Food access is also determined by economics – people’s jobs and incomes, market control (such as the existence of cartels in the Philippines), logistics and distribution, and other factors.
Food utilization: This refers to the way the body makes the most of the various nutrients in the food. Individuals need sufficient energy and nutrient intake to function properly and healthfully. Food intake is affected not just by availability and quantity but also by good care and feeding practices, food preparation, diversity of the diet, and intra-household distribution of food. This determines the health of individuals and citizens, and by extension, the health of the nation.
Stability of the other three dimensions over time: Even if one’s food intake is adequate today, they are still considered food insecure if they periodically suffer from inadequate access to food. Adverse weather conditions, political instability, or economic factors (unemployment, rising food prices) may have an impact on your food security status.
By all these accounts, Filipinos suffer from food insecurity, not just on rice, but other foods as well
And unless the government has a comprehensive plan to address all these four components of food security—not just price—there’s no way we can safely say that we are food secure.
For a start, at least during this period of declared food-security emergency, the DA must push for legislation banning the conversion of agricultural land into residential and commercial land. If the government can do that in the next 90 days, DA Circular No. 3 would have served some purpose.
