Puffed rice gimmick?

Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala boasted in 2011 that the Philippines could produce 100 percent of its rice requirement by 2014 and could even become a rice exporter then.

It’s now the homestretch of 2015 and the Philippines has 300,000 metric tons of residual import from last year and 1.5 million tons of imported rice this year – 1.8 million tons in total, the country’s largest in four years.

So much then for Alcala’s rose-colored pronouncement as the Philippines will remain a rice-importing country at least in the near foreseeable future.

Anyway, Alcala’s department, along with the National Food Authority under it, has come up with a campaign to reduce what it claims to be the P10 billion worth of rice wasted each year in the Philippines.

As per the DA’s math, each Filipino wastes two tablespoons of rice a day or 3.3 kilos per year. Multiplied by the population of 100 million Filipinos, total rice wastages per year would be 330,000 metric tons costing P10 billion or P27 million a day.

That’s a lot of rice going down the drain. The DA and NFA campaign is for 1 million to sign up to become “food guardians” in preventing rice wastage.

This may yet be another gimmick by the DA and NFA, but it should nonetheless prompt all Filipinos to be conscientious in their rice consumption to minimize if not avoid wastage.