Rice-for-classes swap
Rice-for-classes swap
Updated 00:03am (Mla time) Oct 19, 2004
By Juan Mercado
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A10 of the October 19, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
"HAVE you eaten rice?" This is a literal rendering of a Chinese greeting, "How are you?" Filipinos ask, "Kumain ka na?" If rice is in cooking pots year round, Vietnamese farmers list themselves as "not poor."
Rice for most Asians is a main staple. More than two billion Asians derive 60 to 70 percent of their calories from oryza sativa, first sown in India's Deccan plateau, Thailand's Mekong Delta and Korea, a millennium before Christ.
Rice is recasting President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's plan to provide food stamps for indigents. A "school-attendance-for-rice program" is evolving from the Department of Social Welfare and Development's blueprint to distribute food coupons to PhilHealth members.
The Social Weather Stations survey group earlier reported that the number of those who'd nothing to eat at least on one occasion over the last quarter made up 15 percent of families.
Sen. Ralph Recto proposes aid focus on 100,000 impoverished elementary school children. The kids would get a kilogram of rice for every day they attend classes. Slice "sin taxes" to underwrite this program, he urged. Welcome "kilo-for-kilo" counterparts from private groups.
Students often trudge to school without breakfast. Thus, 33 of every 100 pupils who enroll in Grade 1 will drop out before reaching Grade 6. Ms Arroyo's adoption of Recto's proposal signals awareness of hunger -- and rice's impact on perceptions.
"Rice is consumed as a staple food in 43 countries of the region," the Food and Agriculture Organization notes in "Toward A Food Secure Asia And Pacific." "The crop gives part-time work to some 300 million people."
Regimes can crumble from rice shortages. Asian countries resist rice trade liberalization. And 2004 is "International Year of Rice." But beyond rice, what has been this region's experience with food coupons?
Mixed, answers former FAO regional economist Ti Teow Choo. "In Asia, the number of countries which tried this scheme is limited. Under the Bandaranike socialist government in the 1960s, Sri Lanka distributed a fixed amount of free rice to the poor. It nearly bankrupted the state."
Food coupons today are constricted in geographical area, population coverage and duration. Some Indian states periodically give limited rice packs to the poor. China and Vietnam assist through local governments and communities.
Administration can be a quagmire. In Sri Lanka, more than half the population wangled food stamps owing to "dubious means tests." And how do you "wean away" people once subsidies stop?
"More feasible are price interventions with a high subsidy element for limited target groups," Ti thinks. "India for example provides such assistance to remote tribal peoples, resource-poor farmers and the urban destitute."
For the long haul, however, there's no substitute for producing food. "He who depends on others for rice is likely to fast," Asian farmers warn.
A "second harvest" is wasted in processing after reaping or fish catches are landed. A solid post-harvest program is urgent. And science-based tools, such as hybrids from China, offer new hope for production increases.
To mark International Year of Rice, FAO awarded the 2004 World Food Prize to rice breeders Yuan Longping of China and Monty Jones of Sierra Leone. Yuan produced hybrid rice with yields 20 percent higher than conventional varieties. He is credited with providing grain for an additional 60 million people each year. In Ghana, Jones crossed the Asian O. sativa with the African O. glaberrima strains and produced drought- and pest-resistant, high-yielding rice varieties. This "first" in rice breeding helped 20 million farmers in West Africa alone.
Despite cuts in donor aid, research institutes work to beef up rice's nutritional content. Commonly consumed white rice provides adequate energy. But milling strips away most of its protein, fiber, fat, iron and B vitamins.
"The most common nutritional problems in poor rice-eating communities are protein-energy malnutrition and iron, iodine and vitamin A deficiencies," notes the FAO's International Year of Rice website.
Iron deficiency reduces a child's learning ability. It's a leading cause of maternal deaths. Here, 172 mothers die for every 100,000 live births; for Thailand, it is 64. Vitamin A deficiency blinds. It jacks up infant mortality. Out of every 1,000 babies born here, 29 die. In Malaysia, it's eight.
Away from headlines, local and foreign scientists probe other frontiers. International Rice Research Institute scientists seek to introduce into rice a gene that produces beta-carotene, a substance that the human body converts to vitamin A. Food fortification is being studied.
At the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture in Los Baños, Jose Yorobe and Liborio Cabanilla are evaluating "Bt" corn's performance a year after their approval for use. Corn is modified by introducing a gene that builds resistance against the Asian corn borer. Yields are 37-percent higher. And there have been savings on pesticides and reduction of pests. But Bt corn remains controversial.
"The unfulfilled promise of food still lies in the tropics," the FAO director general said in an address at UP Los Baños. "Here in this sun-drenched belt of land, temperature is benign and rainfall abundant. These areas could be the food granaries for the world of our children. The irony is that because of pervasive poverty, life in this very zone is often nasty, brutish and short."
Isn't that what those rice-for-classes swaps are all about?
Updated 00:03am (Mla time) Oct 19, 2004
By Juan Mercado
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A10 of the October 19, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
"HAVE you eaten rice?" This is a literal rendering of a Chinese greeting, "How are you?" Filipinos ask, "Kumain ka na?" If rice is in cooking pots year round, Vietnamese farmers list themselves as "not poor."
Rice for most Asians is a main staple. More than two billion Asians derive 60 to 70 percent of their calories from oryza sativa, first sown in India's Deccan plateau, Thailand's Mekong Delta and Korea, a millennium before Christ.
Rice is recasting President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's plan to provide food stamps for indigents. A "school-attendance-for-rice program" is evolving from the Department of Social Welfare and Development's blueprint to distribute food coupons to PhilHealth members.
The Social Weather Stations survey group earlier reported that the number of those who'd nothing to eat at least on one occasion over the last quarter made up 15 percent of families.
Sen. Ralph Recto proposes aid focus on 100,000 impoverished elementary school children. The kids would get a kilogram of rice for every day they attend classes. Slice "sin taxes" to underwrite this program, he urged. Welcome "kilo-for-kilo" counterparts from private groups.
Students often trudge to school without breakfast. Thus, 33 of every 100 pupils who enroll in Grade 1 will drop out before reaching Grade 6. Ms Arroyo's adoption of Recto's proposal signals awareness of hunger -- and rice's impact on perceptions.
"Rice is consumed as a staple food in 43 countries of the region," the Food and Agriculture Organization notes in "Toward A Food Secure Asia And Pacific." "The crop gives part-time work to some 300 million people."
Regimes can crumble from rice shortages. Asian countries resist rice trade liberalization. And 2004 is "International Year of Rice." But beyond rice, what has been this region's experience with food coupons?
Mixed, answers former FAO regional economist Ti Teow Choo. "In Asia, the number of countries which tried this scheme is limited. Under the Bandaranike socialist government in the 1960s, Sri Lanka distributed a fixed amount of free rice to the poor. It nearly bankrupted the state."
Food coupons today are constricted in geographical area, population coverage and duration. Some Indian states periodically give limited rice packs to the poor. China and Vietnam assist through local governments and communities.
Administration can be a quagmire. In Sri Lanka, more than half the population wangled food stamps owing to "dubious means tests." And how do you "wean away" people once subsidies stop?
"More feasible are price interventions with a high subsidy element for limited target groups," Ti thinks. "India for example provides such assistance to remote tribal peoples, resource-poor farmers and the urban destitute."
For the long haul, however, there's no substitute for producing food. "He who depends on others for rice is likely to fast," Asian farmers warn.
A "second harvest" is wasted in processing after reaping or fish catches are landed. A solid post-harvest program is urgent. And science-based tools, such as hybrids from China, offer new hope for production increases.
To mark International Year of Rice, FAO awarded the 2004 World Food Prize to rice breeders Yuan Longping of China and Monty Jones of Sierra Leone. Yuan produced hybrid rice with yields 20 percent higher than conventional varieties. He is credited with providing grain for an additional 60 million people each year. In Ghana, Jones crossed the Asian O. sativa with the African O. glaberrima strains and produced drought- and pest-resistant, high-yielding rice varieties. This "first" in rice breeding helped 20 million farmers in West Africa alone.
Despite cuts in donor aid, research institutes work to beef up rice's nutritional content. Commonly consumed white rice provides adequate energy. But milling strips away most of its protein, fiber, fat, iron and B vitamins.
"The most common nutritional problems in poor rice-eating communities are protein-energy malnutrition and iron, iodine and vitamin A deficiencies," notes the FAO's International Year of Rice website.
Iron deficiency reduces a child's learning ability. It's a leading cause of maternal deaths. Here, 172 mothers die for every 100,000 live births; for Thailand, it is 64. Vitamin A deficiency blinds. It jacks up infant mortality. Out of every 1,000 babies born here, 29 die. In Malaysia, it's eight.
Away from headlines, local and foreign scientists probe other frontiers. International Rice Research Institute scientists seek to introduce into rice a gene that produces beta-carotene, a substance that the human body converts to vitamin A. Food fortification is being studied.
At the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture in Los Baños, Jose Yorobe and Liborio Cabanilla are evaluating "Bt" corn's performance a year after their approval for use. Corn is modified by introducing a gene that builds resistance against the Asian corn borer. Yields are 37-percent higher. And there have been savings on pesticides and reduction of pests. But Bt corn remains controversial.
"The unfulfilled promise of food still lies in the tropics," the FAO director general said in an address at UP Los Baños. "Here in this sun-drenched belt of land, temperature is benign and rainfall abundant. These areas could be the food granaries for the world of our children. The irony is that because of pervasive poverty, life in this very zone is often nasty, brutish and short."
Isn't that what those rice-for-classes swaps are all about?
posted by Dante at 12:03 AM
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