SENATORS yesterday said the current rice crisis is a disaster long in the waiting because of the government’s neglect of agriculture and corruption.

Senate President Manuel Villar and Senators Mar Roxas, Francis Escudero and Jamby Madrigal also said the government should come up with a survival plan to ensure adequate rice to tide the country over until the next harvest.

Roxas said a rice shortage, coupled with rising oil prices, a recession in the United States and slower OFW remittances, spell disaster for the Philippines.

"No one among us would like to see such ominous clouds forming, but the reality is that we are in for rough times and we must face these threats truthfully and courageously as a nation," he said.

Escudero said chronic neglect of agriculture and misspending is the root cause of the rice shortage.

He said government "redefined food security as not the ability to grow our own food but to simply have the money to buy it elsewhere, and (thus we) deserted irrigation, abandoned farm roads, and neglected post-harvest facilities, so when foreign food become more expensive, we do not have a vibrant farm sector to fall back on."

Villar said only the rice cartels are benefiting from rising prices and not the farmers.

He blamed corruption in government, citing the diversion of the P720 million fertilizer fund allegedly to the campaign chest of President Arroyo in the 2004 presidential elections.

He said farmers are forced to go to loan sharks for money to buy fertilizers and other farm inputs.

"Ang iba ay ayaw nang magtanim dahil walang puhunan sa fertilizer kaya sana itong pondo para sa mga magsasaka para sa agrikultura ay huwag nananakaw at sana ito ay dagdagan pa," he said.

"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 said 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," he said, apparently reacting to calls from Palace official not to waste rice.

"Fifteen percent of the 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.

The loss amounts to 1.494 million metric tons in 2006, valued at P37.3 billion.

"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 could reach P4.48 billion this year," he added.

He said the P1.227 trillion national budget for 2008 as proposed by Malacañang allocated a "measly" P336 million for post harvest facilities, "which is less than 1 percent of our projected rice import bill this year."

Madrigal blamed trade liberalization which was pushed by President Arroyo when she was still a senator.

"The Philippines is Asia’s top rice importer with an average annual importation of over one million metric tons a year from 1995 to 2006, from 151,588 metric tons from 1984 to 1994. It was in 1995 when the Philippines became a member of the World Trade Organization and intensified trade liberalization, through the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade which then Senator Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo strongly pushed for," she said.

She said importation of rice will not solve the crisis. "This is like putting band aid on a malignant cancer."

Pro-administration Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri said Arroyo was just being optimistic in refusing to admit there is a rice shortage.

"The President can’t make such announcement. She should be a dealer of hope and not a voice of doom," Zubiri said.

Roxas over the weekend said Arroyo was in denial mode by claiming that there was no rice shortage amid soaring prices of the food staple that hit a 34-year high.

Zubiri said he knew that a possible supply problem was taken up many times during Cabinet meetings.

Speaker Prospero Nograles proposed the adoption of President Ferdinand Marcos’ "corporate farming" approach to improve rice output.

The Marcos approach required companies with at least 300 employees to establish their own "corporate farms" to ensure food supply for their employees and families.