Dr. Robert Zeigler, IRRI director general, says that Filipino farmers are more productive per hectare than Thai farmers "and this is not simply political talk from an international guest."

The IRRI has been in this country since the 1960s.

An IRRI statement notes that Filipino rice farmers are "already almost a ton a hectare more productive than Thai rice farmers." Not only that. Filipino farmers generally use less pesticide than other Southeast Asian farmers.

Plus, the Filipinos’ "texting" prowess or "use of mobile phone technology" gives them more access to rice farming information than their ASEAN counterparts.

IRRI says that with a target of 5 tons per hectare, Filipino rice farmers should become the most productive in Southeast Asia, ahead of both Vietnam and Indonesia.

"And Thailand doesn’t even have to deal with typhoons," Zeigler said. The Philippines gets around 20 typhoons a year.

IRRI said other geographical challenges that the Philippines faces include its being an archipelago, not a land mass like Thailand. And it has no major river deltas.

Thailand, along with Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and China’s Yunnan province, is irrigated by the 4,350-kilometer Mekong River, the 12th longest river in the world and the 7th longest in Asia.

IRRI said the Philippines’ being an Asian leader in the use of science and technology in agriculture will soon make its farmers benefit from flood-tolerant rice. The new "climate-ready" rice varieties that are tolerant to heat, submerging, and salinity. These should survive the effects of climate change and have higher yields.

So, forget about blaming land use – conversion to subdivisions and golf courses (which even at their worst is actually negligible) – laziness on the part of our framers, greater technology on the part of the Thais and the Vietnamese.

The rice crisis is actually a man-made thing.

We allowed ourselves to become dependent on importations to feed our people. Any right-thinking king – seeing that we were importing so much of our foodstuff including rice – would have immediately decreed that we would import no more rice.

Since we could produce rice and had been doing so for centuries, why are we suddenly the number one rice importer in the world? We were even exporting rice at one time.

Did we become dependent on rice imports because some people were making graft money? Was it all as simple as that why there was no push in the last decade to increase rice production? Does it come down to simple petty graft? (Although those who made money on these rice importations will tell you that the amounts they made were far from what might be considered "petty.")

According to some, it is panic that has pushed the price of rice so high. A reader sent us a clipping from a US paper which reads: "Globally, rice prices are starting to hit record highs, following a host of other commodities. However, experts are clear: There’s currently no shortage of rice.

"’Vietnam and Thailand have had record rice crops in the past year, and India too has had bumper crops,’ says Nathan Childs, a senior economist who follows the global rice market at the Economic Research Service of the US Agriculture Department.

"Instead, what’s driving the price of rice so high are widespread worries about food inflation in many rice-growing nations. ‘In poorer nations, a large share of people’s earnings is spent on food, and big price increases in other kinds of food are harming consumers,’ Childs says. So to protect their supplies of rice – a staple food in much of the world – several countries have imposed export bans or sharp limits. That has led to a sharp reduction of rice available for trade in the global market. In 2007, India and Vietnam, two of the world’s biggest rice exporters, reduced their rice shipments. Since then, Cambodia, Egypt, and Brazil have all halted rice exports. And many observers worry that Thailand, the world’s largest rice exporter, might jump on the bandwagon."

It was panic – with maybe a bit of not-so-petty (last-chance-to-make-a-killing) greed that made the Philippines purchase heavily in the early weeks of the crisis that drove the price to US$1,200 per MT – again, contributing greatly to the crisis. Hopefully, with the No. 1 importer having sated itself, the rice crisis will soon be over.

Then, can we get back to producing rice for ourselves instead of buying what we need from the more inefficient farms of other countries? We are the best rice producers, as testified to by IRRI, and we are importing – rather than producing – our rice. What a shame!

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We have a letter: "I am with you in campaigning for the survival of and bringing back respectability to the National Press Club. Unfortunately, I can’t be around to help in this endeavor for obvious reasons.

"But the task at hand is really a no-brainer – it’s a choice between the so-called ‘dyed-in-the-wool’ journalists versus the pseudo-newsmen who shanghaied the club for their own questionable agenda.

"The question is: could our brothers in this noble profession, the legitimate newsmen, cast away their apathy to rally for the dignity of the club or whatever remains of it. Because you’re right on in saying even previous boards of the club are not exactly squeaky clean and beyond reproach for the horrible state the NPC is in right now.

"When you allow the likes of Rolito Go and his minions to use the club and its practicing members for their dubious ends, you’re practically saying its okay for other people to besmirch and trample upon our dignity.

"I was instrumental in exposing that big scandal that rocked the NPC more than a decade ago. I called the attention of some young idealistic reporters to what was going on because when I witnessed an associate of Mr. Go stuffing thick wads of crisp hundred peso bills into individual envelopes right at the entrance to the club premises, I thought ‘bastusan at garapalan na ito’. I was really offended especially because they also managed to involve some supposedly responsible officers of the club who were my friends in preparing the distribution list or the bribery list to put it bluntly.

"When are we ever going to make a stand to these affluent hoodlums who try to manipulate us or the club to get what they want? It is indeed time for self-respecting journalists to collectively say: Enough is enough! This had gone too far, we need to make things right at the National Press Club!" – Efren T. Dayauon, Elk Grove, CA 95624

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Whoever wins in the NPC elections, let’s all help him do what we all know that needs to be done at the National Press Club!