What caught our eye last week was a news item titled “Rice self sufficiency to be decided in the bedroom”. It brings us to the theory of Thomas Robert Malthus, an English economist ant political scientist who wrote the Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. The essay states that the growth of population tends to increase faster than the supply of food. Some other economists rephrased the statement to read that population growth is inversely proportional to the increase of food supply. Which is rightly so.

According to statistics, at 2006, there are already 85 million Filipinos. Each one consumes 115 kilograms or two sacks of rice per year. This number consumes 30 thousand tons of rice of rice per day. With a population growth of 1.95% in 2040, this 85 million will become 142 million Filipinos. The 1.95% growth or almost 2% is perhaps observed in urban or semi urban areas. In the boondocks it may be even twice higher. Imagine how much those 142 million souls will consume. For a short time that was in 1903 we were producing enough rice for ourselves. Several factors, principally population growth wiped out that situation. We bred sturdy, heavy producing, fast growing, early maturing and disease resistant rice varieties. In short we revolutionized rice industry.

In the late 70's, this knowledge, irrigation and Green Revolution made us again self sufficient in rice. In fact we were exporting this cereal. Again nature took over. Now we are importing rice. The irony is that, in the late 60's and early 70's the Philippines had been teaching Thais, Burmese and other East Asian people how to grow rice. Now they are exporting tons and tons of it to us.

Our obstacles in rice production are geographic, demographic and implacable. There are few river deltas to be converted to riceland. There are also too few lands to be successfully irrigated. Then proportion of rice consumers and rice growers are drastically altered by the proliferation of the former and the reduction of the later through urban migration. Not only that demands for lebensraum would make inroads into rice growing space.

The El Niño pattern cannot be avoided. From time to time, droughts lasting several months cause bad or no harvest at all. Rain fed paddies will be arid, even irrigated lands were affected. The required buffer stock of 350 thousand sacks will last only several days. Corn production cannot fill the gap. Fortunately, the rural population could be able to subsist on corn, cooking bananas and root crops but the urban folks will feel the pinch. We have to increase our rice imports to feed the people.

One answer may be the increase of overseas employment. But that is no solution. We have experienced brain drain. The best of our professionals are serving people of developed countries when their services are sorely needed here especially in the rural areas. There will be disruption of families. Fathers, mothers, husbands, wives go abroad, Families are broken up. No amount of dollars remitted will take place of parental guidance