⌛ Rice crisis

That was just a jab at the mall thread here, a jest. But if there is no money in growing rice, land developement will follow for other purposes.
There is not a rice shortage, but there is a rice crisis, my opinion. The Philippine government recently said they want a 3-4 week surplus for the coming Typhoon season and are working to achieve that small reserve through purchases.

And why do you think government subsidies, or conversly, tarriffs will help all the poor? Make the prices higher so no poor families can acces rice? farmers can profit by using old techniques?

There is not a simple answer to the problem.

I had a well educated and knowledgable Filipino friend explain it to me this way. Another interesting perspective.

He said most of the poorest people are not affected. Why? Because they don't eat rice now, they are eating Mongo and dried fish, or root crops. They may by a small amout of rice, they now just by less and get by.
He feels a shortage mostly affects the working poor who live in towns and cities and need to budget for food from small salaries.

In any event all those statistics you mentioned are published, I found them online, sorry I don't have URLs, but it should be easy. I subscribe to GMS, the Inquirer, ABS CBN news feeds, a good source of national news, I have a link on my blog to all those news feeds.

 

Curve ball right by me! I didnt even see it! Ha! Good one! I think I am too or becoming to jaded with the Mall rhetoric.

 

Potato is a root. Maybe this will replace the rice. Interesting fact is that a potato can hold a good deal of water in it. Thats why on Guam to catch the brown tree snakes the government has put up numerous 'minnow traps' look like a small main lobster trap. Anyway, they put a rat inside the trap and the rat is inside a caged box inside the trap so that the snake cannot touch it. The rat has a big potato inside its little caged box inside the big 'minnow trap' The rat can live off of this potato for months because of the amount of water in the potato. The botanical name for a potato is tuber. Close to the name for water here in the Philippines, tubig! I wonder if there is any correlation. Sorry if I got off topic