Villar urges government to change spending priorities not Pinoy's eating habits in addressing rice crisis

Senate President Manny Villar today pushed for wise and transparent government spending on agriculture to address a lot of farmers' woes that "could have prevented the looming crisis on Filipinos' staple grain."

"Government should spend tax pesos on irrigation, so more lands can be opened up for multiyear cropping; on post harvest facilities, so palay already produced will not be wasted; and on roads, so palay and rice can be cheaply brought to the markets," Villar said.

Villar commented that "the problem is not the cooked rice wasted on the table but on the palay that is lost on roads where they are dried. There is nothing wrong with our eating habits, but there is with the government's spending priorities."

"Fifteen percent of the country's palay harvest is lost to lack of dryers, warehouses and post harvest facilities, a volume that could feed 12.5 million Filipinos for a year," Villar said. This was equivalent to 1.494 million metric tons - or 1.494 billion kilos - of rice wasted in 2006, when national palay harvest reached 15.327 million metric tons.

"Because an average Filipino consumes 118.7 kilos of rice annually, the rice lost would have been able to meet the rice needs of Metro Manila for one year," Villar said.

According to Villar, the country is also paying a steep price for neglecting palay post harvest technology: the value of such rice losses amounted to a staggering P37.3 billion, based on the prevailing P25 per kilo price of the national staple.

"That's the high price we pay for neglecting post harvest infrastructure," Villar said. "If ratio of losses to harvest remains at 15 percent and if we use the P30 per kilo as benchmark, and assuming production is flat, total losses can reach P4.48 billion this year," he added.

The P37.3 billion lost to wasted palay was bigger than the P23.6 billion or $513.3 million (where the conversion is at P46: 1$) the country spent for importing 1.916 million MT of rice in 2006, Villar said.

"For that amount we could have built dryers, pavements, ware houses and taught our farmers the correct after-harvest care of palay and thereby cancelled the need for such importation," he said. He said the 2008 national budget proposed by Malacañang allocated a measly P336 million for post harvest facililties, "which is less than one percent of our project rice import bill this year." "Parang butil lang ito sa isang sako ng bigas na aangkatin natin. If we are going to buy two million metric tons of rice abroad at a cost $600 or P24,600 per that will be P49.2 billion, which is 146 times than our annual post harvest budget," he said.