The Rise of Rice

For quite a while now, a lot of news coverage had been devoted to an impending rice shortage set to affect The Philippines, as well as some neighboring Asian countries. So a big deal is being made, naturally, about the price of rice. If you're well-to-do, that shouldn't bother you the least bit because you'd be able to easily pay extra for it. But on the other side of the coin, if you have just ordinary means, every price increase hurts. I personally didn't think too much of it quite frankly, because I hadn't actually seen any price change yet. That was until I had to pick up some rice today and saw the highly remarkable price increase. What used to average 33 to 34 Pesos is now 36 to 37 Pesos, and the better varieties have hit 40 Pesos even. "Wow!", I thought to myself. Perhaps, at least the price of instant noodles hasn't gone up, eh Mr. Ignacio Bunye? I'm sure that's funny only to me now, because the majority of Pinoys with average means must be freaking out with such a development.

I recall to this day learning in grade school that our country was importing rice, despite having a countryside more suited for agricultural development. It's really too bad this wonderful set of leaders we have chooses to not do enough for our farmers to produce even just enough rice, so we could stop importing it. But importing rice is big business, so go figure. Friends in high places, like to help friends with high-yield businesses.

With the stop-gap measures the government is said to be undertaking, predictably the rice selling industry has threatened to call a "rice-holiday" to protest the disturbance to their business undertakings. Ah, this is where i get to insert the old adage, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Too bad I hear the pound of cure pays more for certain unscrupulous individuals.

I hope this rice crisis doesn't worsen, for all our sakes, and for the sake of still being able to ask for "extra rice".