Rice importation: Deliberate or not?
Again, it shocked me to read about the Philippine government's impending plan to import rice from neighboring Asian countries. And I honestly believe there are two valid reasons why the country has initiated plans to import this staple from countries that only learned their rice technology from the International Rice Research Institute ( IRRI ) in Laguna , Philippines. One of the reasons could be that the local farmers did not produce as much rice because they could no longer stomach the high costs of inputs like fertilizers, which should be subsidized by the government but could not because it wanted to help the businessmen rather than the poor farmers. The other reason is that it is much cheaper to import rice and sell them in the local market rather than boost local production which is more expensive. Of course, it is not the fault of the local farmers if they could not sell or produce more rice considering that the National Food Authority ( NFA ) always wanted to buy their pro