26/08/2023
Rice and life
By Antonio Contreras
August 22, 2023
The Manila Times
TRADE and Industry Secretary Alfredo Pascual must have underestimated the love affair of Filipinos with rice when he suggested that we modify our diet and use other alternatives such as camote and corn as sources for our carbohydrate intake. Instead of taking this as a sensible suggestion to deal with the shortage of the supply of rice that is used as a justification for its importation, he was met with collective outrage. He was even accused of being insensitive.
In my honest opinion, it was just a case of misunderstanding, where Secretary Pascual spoke on a different page compared to many Filipinos. It stems from a fundamental difference in how people interpret the word 'diet.' Pascual used the word to mean changing our eating behavior, by replacing rice with camote and corn, while ordinary Filipinos must have interpreted 'diet' in its common usage as diyeta,' which means not eating at all.
No wonder many, like Cathy Estavillo, the spokesman for Bantay Bigas, were offended. Indeed, taking Pascual's use of 'diet' to mean not the former but the latter would be so offensive in the face of people who barely eat, or are confronted with the rising price of rice.
But Pascual's suggestion that we just adjust our diet and use alternatives to rice such as camote and corn may not be that offensive. In fact, it was already proposed by scientists as one of the strategies to promote rice self-sufficiency. Reducing the demand for rice can help stave off shortages, and can have the effect of stabilizing its price and in easing our reliance on importation.
The issue here, thus, would no longer be the offensiveness and insensitivity of asking people who can hardly afford rice to be on a 'diet,' that is, eating less of it, but the practicality of changing our diet by eating less rice and using alternatives that may even turn out to be more expensive and whose supply may not necessarily also be stable and reliable.
Pascual should have known better to familiarize himself with the different nuance of the word 'diet' among ordinary Filipinos. But more importantly, he should have been more sensitive to the reality that rice is life for many Filipinos. Not only that, for many, there is an emotional attachment to it but also because the Filipino palate would find it unusual, even unacceptable, to eat some dishes without rice.
There are also many Filipinos, particularly those who are income-challenged, who survive only on rice. It is in these that Pascual can be called out for being insensitive, but not because he asked Filipinos to be on a diet, or to eat less, because that is not what he actually meant. What he actually proposed was for people to adjust their diets.
However, for a people who have an intense relationship with rice, Filipinos appear to be wasteful. A study recently published in the BMC Public Health journal, written by Imelda Angeles-Agdeppa, Marvin Bangan-Toledo and Jezreel Ann Taruc Zamora, revealed that the average household plate waste of rice is 49.6 g ± 4.7. They also found that female-headed households were 0.82 times less likely to have plate waste of rice and rice products compared to male-headed households. Urban wastage of rice was 0.83 times higher than rural wastage, while rice wastage in richer households was 1.38 times higher compared to poorer households.
The Philippine Rice Research Institute (Philrice) estimated that rice wastage amounts to P7.2 billion a year, enough to feed 2 million individuals. The average amount of rice wastage daily is about 2 tablespoonfuls. Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture has estimated a shortage of about 80,000 metric tons of rice from July to the end of September.
These empirically established facts come in the face of people who consider rice as life and who are so enamored with it that they would consider as culturally insensitive any suggestion that we reduce our consumption of it and shift to other staples, even if it is actually a rational strategy to enable rice self-sufficiency.
We waste rice every time we leave some portions uneaten on our plates. We are in the habit of taking so much from buffet tables, whether in restaurants or during parties and fiesta celebrations. Our cultural practice of celebrating with others in a boodle fight has a tendency to result in rice leftovers.
And yet, we complain when rice prices soar beyond our means without thinking that prices are affected by shortages of supply, and that rice wastage aggravates the problem. The same people who oppose importing rice are also the very same people who rail against Pascual, even misconstruing what he said, for suggesting that we eat camote and corn, if we can, to help address the shortage.
Wasting P7.2 billion worth of rice, which deprives 2 million Filipinos of the staple, is a serious problem. It is simply inconsistent for us to have a romance with rice without caring for it to the point that we waste it. It's about time drastic measures are adopted to promote rice self-sufficiency in addition to modernizing our agriculture.
For those who are willing, and can afford it, shifting to other staples should be encouraged, considering, based on the study cited above, that richer households tend to have higher rice wastage. Food outlets must now allow people to order rice according to their preferences and capacities, not in fixed measurements such as by the cup. Unlimited rice should be regulated, and any leftover would be levied with a surcharge or a rice-wastage tax or penalty. Restaurants offering boodle fights and buffets should be stricter in implementing their no-leftover policies.
Pascual may have sounded insensitive. But what he was in fact directing us to do is have a serious reexamination of our own contribution to the problem and reflect on our own part in crafting a systemic solution. We cannot just expect government to solve all our problems without doing our share. We want our rice. So, we should eat it, all of it.
