IT was not too long ago when corrupt leaders found food importation lucrative (during colonization, USAID, PL480). Filipinos were made to shift from whatever local root crops they were used to, to be arina-eaters. It is possible to shift people’s staple food; they did it when they rammed arina down our throats.
Wheat arina is still not planted locally; it is an imported food. That other staple, rice, has always been a problematic grain to cultivate locally. (Planting Rice is Never Fun!) In this regard, rice ought to be considered a luxury food, definitely not for the poor. It provides the poor with no nutrient of particular concern. Lately it is becoming scarce, too expensive.
The NFA rice which is subsidized with tax money, to sell to the poor cheaply, is in the hands of grafters and corrupters as well. NFA rice is transferred from its NFA sacks to non-NFA sacks to be hidden in private warehouses, later sold at commercial price (P26+ instead of the mandated P17.50/kg). When I am in Los Baños, the rice dealers never have cheap NFA rice. A couple of times last year, there was a bin half full, and they would only sell one kilo per family, and soon there was none.
Rice has always been a problematic grain to depend on, both in difficulty in cultivation and production (economically), devoid of nutrients of concern (making white rice a nutritionally deficient). Rice blandness requires tasty nutritious foods which are unaffordable; white rice is almost all starch.
This shift in people’s eating habits likewise occurred in Africa. Before white arina started coming in by the shiploads, Africans were eating millet and sorghum (sarg-am).
Sorghum and millet are related. Both grow well in poorly fertilized and dry soil. Both are the oldest foods known to humans. Both grains can be made into bread and all else that wheat can be made into. Karen Railey tells us a lot about millet, that it was mentioned in the Bible, and have been staple foods in China, India and Africa, and grown by lake dwellers of Switzerland during the Stone age.
Millet grows tall like corn, the seeds, from yellow to pink. Hulling removes the indigestible hull, but keeps the germ intact. Millet has an incredibly short growing season–65 days. Millet can feed a lot of people, non-glutinous, is not an acid forming food, most digestible grain even for children. Millet is tasty with nut-like flavor containing myriad of beneficial nutrients.
It is nearly 15 percent protein, with high amounts of fiber, B-complex vitamins, high in iron, magnesium, phosphorous and potassium. It is rich in phytochemicals including phytic acid believed to lower cholesterol and anti-cancer phytate.
Sorghum is a multi-purpose crop yielding nutritious grain in dry and hot climates. It can be grown throughout the year with minimum water supply as it requires only half the water required to grow corn and 1/8 of the water required to grow sugarcane.
Both millet and sorghum grain, perfect crops for most of the Philippines, can be made into breads, cereal, and all else that Filipinos do with rice and arina. Himalayan inhabitants whose staples are millet and sorghum enjoy health and longevity.
Anything we do with rice, can be done with millet and sorghum. Sorghum specifically can be fermented as beverage since it has a lot of sugar which is why the Intl Crop Research is checking on it as bioethanol source.