Rice notes

I texted my good friends Sr. Isyang and Sr. Emma whose Susi Foundation serves farmers’ rice cooperatives in Southern Luzon to ask if there are extraordinary stories in their area related to the current global and local rice price crisis. These award-winning nuns-turned-farmers have been working in a farm setting in Quezon for the last 30 years.

Sr. Isyang texted a reply: “Effect of high rice prices here is families spend less on merienda, parties & other nonessential expense. Dey can still eat 3x a day, rural kc. Small rice mills have less stocks coz of cost. Less going 2 cockpits of those saving 4 food. No xtra-ord stories.”

Our common friend Ika Laurel Loewen who was based in Germany for a long time is back for good to produce food and give hope through her little farm in Barangay Laurel in Tagkawayan, Quezon. (She was my former schoolmate at St. Scho who later left for Spain to study and then settled in the land of Beethoven.) This great-grandniece of national hero Jose Rizal has named her little place “Mi Retiro”. Sure, it’s a place for rest but definitely not for retirement especially when there is a food crisis.



Ika has her rice-crisis stories to tell, one tragic, one happy. The food crisis had turned one desperate man in her barangay into a killer. A man who had three young children and a pregnant wife was trying to borrow money from his friend. Three times he was denied. One day some men taunted him by saying he had stolen something from the man from whom he had tried to borrow money. Shamed and enraged, this man hacked to death the one who had refused to lend him money.

The good news is that Ika is doing all she can to make her tiny tubigan (rice field) yield rice that, she hopes, could be sold at a low price. Her farmer-aide agrees to going organic. It will give a good example and save on chemical pesticides and fertilizer, she told me. There is good water supply and the farm could have three rice crops a year. She’s also been planting veggies and trees, raising farm animals (two horses, a carabao, free-range chickens) in her place.

This is the time to produce and give hope, to make sure no one goes hungry in our little spheres. To live simply and well. Like this Belgian who lives in Baguio and wrote me this letter.

“Dear Ceres, Being named after the Roman goddess of agriculture, you seem to have been predestined to write about the cereal rice. In any case, your article entitled "What color is your rice?" (Inquirer, April 17, 2008) was very interesting indeed. (The word cereal comes from the name Ceres. – CPD)

“I am a Belgian living in Baguio, who, like you, has been eating violet rice for some time. A former bread eater (home-made), I shifted to rice and more particularly to the purple black variety called here balatinao, to which I became frankly addicted. So much so that my first chore early in the morning is to cook my daily ration of rice…

“The vendor at the rice section of Baguio's palengke assures me that her balatinao rice is free of pesticides but I only have her word for it. So, being like you, a health buff, I wish I could buy, for my own consumption, violet rice organically grown by those farmers affiliated with the Foundation for the Care of Creation in Cagayan…Best regards, Joseph Kostenbaum”

And here is a letter from former ambassador Bienvenido Tan Jr. who is a veteran of social development projects. Centro Saka please give him answers!

“I sat at a couple of meetings on the rice problem and read several articles including yours of May 1. There must be something wrong with the figures or my hearing or my reading must be bad because they do not add up.

“There seems to be some agreement as to the number of hectares devoted to rice production, i.e., 4,272,000. The reported average production of palay differs from 3.8 m.t. per hectare to 4.04. This means 9,740,150 m.t. of rice at 60% recovery or 11,363,520 m.t. at 70%.

If the Dept. of Agriculture figure of 4.04 per ha.is used, this translates to 17,258,880 of palay or 10,355,328 of rice (at 60% recovery) or 12,081,216 (at 70%).

“The National Food Authority will or has imported 2,100,000 m.t. of rice to make up for the shortfall of 10%. This means the country needs about 23,000,000 m.t. of rice to feed our 88.5 M people. This is DA figure re the country’s need: 33 M m.t. of palay or 23.1 M m.t. of rice at 70% recovery.

“Here is where I have questions:

1) The area devoted to hybrid rice is about 300,000 hectares or 2.1M m.t. of palay. Why raise a fuss (about hybrid) when this is but a fraction of what the country needs?

2) how many hectares are planted to good and/or certified seeds? If the figures of Centro Saka and Fr. Lucas are correct, we should have a surplus of rice even at 60% recovery as your article points out. Why do we have a shortfall?

3) if a farmer can increase his production from 4.04M m.t. to 10M m.t. why does he not use good or certified seeds? He can double his income.

4) If we produce only 12,081,216 m.t. of rice and import 2,100,000 or a total inventory of 13,181,216 m.t. and the country needs 23,100,000, where are we getting the 8,818,784 m.t.?

“There must be something not being said or disclosed. For me, we should not fight over the better procedure. Let each group do its thing and the country will benefit if we do not produce more children than the needed rice to feed them.”

Oh, I have learned that in some areas up north farmers have been told they will not get irrigation water unless they use hybrid rice being peddled by some agencies. What about those who have been working hard to go organic to help heal this planet?