PhilRice debunks reports of rice shortage
It's a jigsaw puzzle as to why the Philippines continues to import rice from neighboring countries like Thailand and Vietnam. I understand that farmers in these two neighboring countries are being supported by their governments. This is in stark contrast to that of the Philippines where the local farmers are left to fend for themselves. Farm inputs like fertilizers are not subsidized by the government so that many poor farmers are left with no choice but to borrow money from usurers in order to catch up with the farming season, which normally comes twice a year in provinces where ricefields largely depend on rainfed water, rather than the irrigation system. While some agriculture officials are hell bent on sticking to their earlier stance that the country needs to import millions of tons of rice due to rice shortage, officials at the Philippine Rice Institute in Nueva Ecija were on the opposite side of the coin. They said there is no rice shortage in actual terms. The primary reaso