Tag: food security

Smoke and mirrors mask dire situation surrounding rice prices as elections loom

May 21, 2024 Ramon Ortoll No Comments

Most political analysts describe former President Rodrigo Duterte as a populist but he wasn’t close to being one when it came to economic policies which he left to his finance secretary to set. The Rice Tarrification Law (RTL) was passed to put an end to rice subsidies and corruption at the National Food Authority (NFA)…

Economy

Agriculture continues to be BURIED by the Philippines’ enormous and rapidly-growing population

April 9, 2024April 9, 2024 Ramon Ortoll 2 Comments

Social justice versus food security. This is what it boils down to now. In his PhilSTAR piece “Subsistence”, Alex Magno observes… Our rice production is immune to all the subsidies and credit programs organized by government. It will continue to be inefficient unless we consolidate and industrialize our farmlands. This sector remains trapped in subsistence…

Development

Runaway inflation highlights the Philippines’ fundamental weaknesses: addiction to imports and corrupt bureaucracy

August 19, 2023 Ramon Ortoll 6 Comments

It’s easy to blame higher rice prices on the previous administration for passing the rice tarrification law when one conveniently forgets the corruption that came with rice import permits. Importers were openly paying farmers’ cooperatives to apply for permits which they used to import rice. The cooperatives didn’t have the financial capacity to import which…

Business, Economy

How should Philippine food security be addressed?

May 2, 2022May 2, 2022 The Unpopular Opinion 55 Comments

“An army marches on its stomach.” is one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s most popular quotes. Even with his prowess as a highly capable commander and strategist, the French emperor himself had recognized that a country’s military power projection greatly relies on its capacity to feed its armed forces. With France as the most significant great power…

Business, Development, Economy

Emerging presidential candidates for 2016: a reflection of Philippine intellectual bankruptcy

May 12, 2014 benign0 12 Comments

See, this is why I continue to assert that the Philippines is an intellectually-bankrupt society. Well into the second decade of the 21st Century, Filipinos continue to fail to step up to the challenge of injecting a bit of innovation in their politics. For all the hoo-ha about “empowering” effect of “social media”, activism has…

Politics, Society

Debunking the Singaporean Laksa

July 9, 2013 John Bay 2 Comments

Before the Laksa goes by the way of “chopsuey”, I would like to say my piece that I myself had been deceived that the origins of the Laksa (A rich and spicy noodle soup supposedly of Peranakan origins) came by way of Singapore and to the world. It did not come as a surprise, that…

Culture, Glitz and Glamour, Lifestyle, Society