By Cris Evert Lato
Cebu Daily News
First Posted 11:15:00 04/03/2008
The owner of a small eatery in barangay Mabolo has stopped selling cooked corn grits after prices of corn went up from P16 per kilo in December 2007 to P23 in February.
“Kung magluto ko, gamayan na lang pud nako ang takos. (If I cook corn grits, I make the portions smaller),†said Josephine Alfeche, 46.
The steep price of of corn grits, now P30 per kilo, is due to a shortage of corn in Central Visayas, according to millers and retailers in Cebu.
They urged the government to address the shortage being felt in the region and the entire country.
“We are referring to white corn here, which is for human consumption. The government offers subsidy for farmers to plant yellow corn, which is commonly used for biofuel,†said Nestor Tio, president of the Cebu Grain Millers Association.
Tio said prices would not have gone up if there was an abundant supply of white corn.
“White corn is the substitute for rice but this is not the case (at present). All over the Philippines, white corn is scarce. We started feeling this (since) December 2007,†Tio said.
Tio urged government to support farmers in planting white corn.
“Hangyo lang ko sa gobyerno nga i-subsidize pud ang white corn para motanom ang mga farmers. (I ask the government to please subsidize the cost of white corn so that farmers will also plant them). Let us give importance to white corn because this is a substitute for rice,†he said.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has ordered the Department of Agriculture to look into the reported shortage of corn and determine if it is due to the hoarders or wrong distribution of the staple.
About 30 retailers in Carbon market have stopped selling corn grits since last week due to high prices, according to Erwin Gok-ong, Cebu City north chapter vice president of the Grain Retailers Confederation of the Philippines (Grecon).
Manuel Yu, president of the Cebu Traders Association, which supplies grains to retailers, confirmed the shortage of white corn but said there is an abundance of yellow corn in their warehouses.
However, most people do not buy yellow corn for their families because it is associated as an ingredient for livestock feeds, he said.
“But I encourage you to buy yellow corn. The taste and texture is all right, comparable to white corn,†he said.
The effect of the corn shortage is deeply felt in Cebu because local corn farmers only produce 49 percent of what the province can consume, said Ricardo Oblena, Department of Agriculture Central Visayas director.
The province gets its main supply of corn grits from Mindanao particularly the provinces of Bukidnon, Cotabato and Davao, Oblena said.
Data from the DA showed that Cebu consumed 197, 472 metric tons of corn last year but only produced 106,152 metric tons of corn in 2007. Only 96,889 metric tons of these were for human consumption.
About 2,539 metric tons were used as seed while 6,724 metric tons were used for livestock feeds.
Among the four provinces in Central Visayas, Bohol is considered 111.43 percent sufficient because it produces more than what the population can consume.
Siquijor is 66.38 percent sufficient and Negros Oriental, 61.32 percent sufficient.
The cost today of corn grits makes it comparable to some commercial rice varieties.
However, some Cebuanos still prefer eating cooked corn grits because they say it gives a sense of fullness in the stomach that satisfies hunger pangs better than rice.
Some consumers also noticed that rice varieties that cost P34 per kilo get spoiled easily.
“Many times, I’ve bought ganador rice hoping that we would eat good quality rice only to find out that it has a different smell and spoils easily,†said Floramae Kyamko of barangay Tinago in Cebu City.
Jesselyn Tagbar, a beautician and mother of two, said she could not understand why prices of basic commodities continue to rise.
She said her salary of P88 per day is not even enough to get by.
“Pasabta kuno ko unsaon nako pagpakaon akong mga anak anang akong sweldo unya sigeg saka ang presyo sa bugas. Wala nay mapili sa mais ug humay (How will I feed my children with my meager salary while prices of rice continue to increase? I can no longer choose between corn and rice),†Tagbar, 31, said.
Agriculture officials earlier said prices of rice went up due to increases in world market prices of rice,, fuel, palay and fertilizers. Even the conversion of agriculture land to industrial use was considered a factor.
Cebu has a daily rice requirement of 14,477 metric tons of rice but only five towns and two cities in the province produce rice.
These are the cities of Carcar (320 hectares) and Toledo (243) and the towns of Pinamungajan (284), Argao (274 hectares), Asturias (205), Balamban (153) and Sibonga (116).
To address problems in the distribution of rice, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña said he would ask the help of the National Food Authority (NFA) to put up one Tindahan ni Gloria in each mountain barangay in the city.
He said the government outlet would assure hillyland residents they had access to affordable rice.
For urban poor areas, the mayor talked of applying the system of Curitiba in Brazil where residents would exchange their collected garbage for a pack of rice.
He said this would help speed up garbage collection but the mayor gave no details of when and how this would be done.
Meanwhile, a farmer’s group said there was no need for the government to import rice if local farmers were given enough support.
Bohol province was cited as an example of an area that produces more than it could consume.
Estrella Catarata, executive director of the Farmers Development Center (Fardec) said government spent P10 billion in importing one billion of tons of rice when only P3 billion to P4 billion was needed to support local rice farmers to produce the same volume.
Bohol has a population of 1.1 million population and annual rice consumption of 111.8 million kilos.
But Catarata said Bohol farmers produced 112,822,670 kilos of rice annually from the province's 36,544 hectares of rice plantation.
She said the main cause of shortage in rice production was the conversion of rice plantations to palm oil plantations in Ubay and Tinidad towns in Bohol.
“We don't need to import. We have rice capacity pero ang mga mag-uuma gigutom (We have rice capacity but the farmers are hungry).
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