What a difference a day makes

In Davos, in Dubai a few months back, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo wanted the world to believe what she kept repeating to local audiences who could only gasp in disbelief - "It's the Philippine economy, guys. You'd be stupid not to see how well it has grown under my watch," or words to that effect.

Not exactly yesterday, but today, that same claim about an economy doing wonders, is like a big fat egg that has cracked. What a difference a "day" could make indeed, when flatulent chimera is spun as gospel truth.

The natives, except for the stockbrokers and those who make piles trading GFI and GOCC investments in the market, such as a Singapore-tied broker tied likewise to a most powerful sibling, and a broker known for her oh-so strong connections to a most powerful husband, have been kept wondering all along how in the world they could partake of the gains of the strong peso, and the "strong" economic fundamentals, and the "booming" economy.

And just when Doña Gloria tells us the "gains" would trickle down, by massive infrastructure and social services spending she intends to undertake this year and next, God in his mysterious ways throws a monkey wrench, correction, several wrenches into the pot.

First, the price of oil. At $102 per barrel, despite the end of winter. No one knows when it will soften. When Angelo Reyes called belatedly for an energy summit, this space ridiculed the confab as too much talk too late, because we said oil prices would soften by mid-February, when winter mellows. I was wrong.

Second, the US economic recession, which despite our economic team's wersh-wersh about our "decoupled" economy, will haunt us no end, as it has already begun to affect our exports for the rest of the year, and as it has already plunged our "boom" industry, the call centers and business outsourcing ventures, in a pall of impending gloom. Wait till Pinoys who bought residential condos and retirement escapes start faltering on their installments in the other "boom" - real estate.

Third, what I wrote about when Angelo Reyes announced his energy summit months ago, that the crisis really will be food. Rice and corn, wheat and cooking oil, and its resultant effects on practically everything else. Those who read this space faithfully will recall. Now it has come to roost.

What a difference a day makes.

To be sure, there are externalities beyond our control. We import oil. God gave us comparative advantage in climate, soil and marine resources, even natural beauty. But we despoil or disdain these. God gave Muslims all the oil beneath their desert sands, and they know how to profit from these, to our consternation.

Filipino-Americans didn't elect a dodo like Bush twice over. Now in the twilight of his reign, his friend Tony Blair has exited from his side, wisely and gingerly, and his other friend, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is cozying up to China. Bush is left like a used rag, a ropa vieja, by his right-hand woman in Southeast Asia. Who is she betting on, Hillary, her "classmate" Bill's beloved? Wait till Obama sends her to the barracks.

But let's tackle food, which as we said as the week opened, is la politica del estomago.

Art Yap has become everybody's whipping boy because he would not admit there is a rice shortage. "Tell us the truth," Mar and Loren and everybody else demands, as if they were addressing feeble Romy Neri, or thick-faced Ben Abalos on the ZTE stink.

The problem with rice and other commodities, as Mar the investment banker ought to know, is that when you level off on stocks and shortages in the market, you fuel more speculation. And in this country as in others where market forces are not ideally competitive, telling the whole truth fuels hoarding and artificial shortages.

Should Art go to the nine justices of the high tribunal and invoke "executive privilege"? The truth is, food prices worldwide are going sky-high because of a combination of factors, not the least of which is Al Gore's truthful, though inconvenient warnings. Climate change, a problem scientists warned us about a generation ago, has come to haunt us now, in all its present aberrations, in all its direst portents.

People pine for the "good" old days when Marcos had Masagana 99, and a bumper crop of rice resulted for a few years, forgetting its abysmal effects on the national treasury, with hardly anyone repaying the loans. Why can't Art Yap do the same, they ask? First, could Art get that kind of free-wheeling money from Gary Teves and the boss woman? Second, hey guys, when Bong Tanco created a surplus, we had 40 million mouths to feed. Today we have 90 million, and growing. If Art Yap's boss woman had copied China's one baby per couple policy seven years ago, we'd have stopped at 82 million mouths by now. But come to think of it, could she ever? Would the bishops of our Church have allowed her? Would they not have marched to EDSA and sent her packing earlier to Galicia, or is it the Algarve?

In contrast, because King Bhumibol Aduljadej willed it, and all the prime ministers in succession supported it, Thailand's population management policy has resulted in 68 million people versus our 90 million. In the time of Marcos and Tanco, we had similar numbers. They slowed down on babies and grew their economy faster. We grew our economy slower and increased our babies tenfold.

Has the Philippine territory grown since Marcos and Tanco? No. It's still the same land area, the size of California, minus the waters in between, which we are pawning off to China. So where would Art Yap get his rice?

To be fair, rice production per hectare has vastly improved. But hectarage has not. Who do we blame, Sta. Lucia, Camella, Eton, Ayala, and the real estate magnates who've taken over the rice paddies of Laguna and Cavite, Bulacan and Rizal? Population once more, guys.

This is not to say that we could not do more. Hybrid seeds for one, imported from China, except they cost much, and agrarian reform beneficiaries could hardly afford these, because they possess no economies of scale. That's what you get when you bleed your heart for peasant land, without wondering where they will get the economic wherewithal to produce more instead of much less. And hybrid seeds require learning new methodologies, away from ingrained cultures of rice-planting. That takes time, and a network that locally-appointed provincial and municipal agriculturists, likely political favorites, can hardly comprehend. How long has Yap been agriculture secretary?

Biotechnology and the shift to organic fertilizers in a regime of high chemical fertilizer costs do provide a way, a better way. Chemical fertilizers are by-products of oil, so with oil at $102 per barrel, fertilizer has zoomed from P800 per bag to P1,300 apiece. So how could you squeeze the rice farmer into selling his produce at the farm-gate prices for palay that government buys at present cost of production? Naturally, they sell to commercial buyers.

There are a hundred and more details that the Department of Agriculture must do in a regime of worldwide food shortages, other than explaining and explaining because people complain and complain. You cannot blame the people when they see rice priced higher in the market, but you cannot put the blame solely on the department that has to provide rice and corn, vegetables and chicken, fish and pork, beef and whatever else, on our daily tables, at affordable cost at that.

It's all the years of neglect, all the years of lack of foresight, and a population problem we refuse to see, all combining for a lethal cocktail. That cocktail is today's special.