By Danilo P. Padua, PhD
I was toying with another topic to write for this piece but when I started, I was a bit startled when I saw what came out from the tip of my fingertips!
So, I decided to go on with it. Any way it is something that I was also thinking to deal with. It is actually a topic that I think I wrote about before the last pandemic.
Be ricesponsible! It was a catch phrase coined during the term of Dr. Eufemio Rasco as Executive Director of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (Philrice). It was to fight the wasteful consumption of rice by us, Filipinos.
This was actually a hot local topic up to early last week but was overtaken by an issue which is not only hotter but is actually a political ticking bomb. Everyone knows it is the impeachment complaint lodged by several groups against VP Sara Duterte.
As of this writing, there are now 2 separate impeachment complaints filed in the House of Representatives. The impeachment is a process that PBBM thinks will tie up all the members of HOR and the Senate to the issue, impairing the legislative agenda of both houses of Congress. In PBBM’s opinion, the process does not improve a single Filipino’s life.
Well, our present topic, I believe, affects every Filipino’s life. Let us just then focus our attention on this.
I don’t really understand people, even those who have less in life, wasting so much rice on their plates. Yet, they are complaining about how expensive rice is nowadays. It is partly therefore our own fault that rice supply is becoming scarcer on certain times of the year.
The words of my father is still ringing in my ears. He often told us, his children, “You have to eat every grain of rice in your plate. Remember, there are people out there who are not even eating 3 square meals a day for lack of rice on their tables, so don’t waste rice.”
“Besides, every bit of rice left uneaten is crying for attention,” he added. Those are words that I also taught to my children.
According to Philrice, every Filipino in a household is wasting 6.5 grams of rice every day, according to research. This translates to about 255,000 metric tons per year. That is substantial by any yardstick. The amount is greatly amplified when we consider the wastage incurred in restaurants.
In one very recent interview, I heard the President of the Restaurant owners of the Philippines saying that they cook rice by batch, meaning they cook only the amount of rice for the expected customers, so there is little wastage. This was his claim. Maybe that is true on their part as owners, but when you look at the plates of the customers when they leave there is much rice left crying for attention.
It is an open secret, that some people in position in the government are happy when we waste more. Why? Because it means that local rice supply become even shorter than our need. And the solution? Import pa more! When we import, some money flows somewhere. Tax money wasted.
The more rice wasted, the more tax money is misused. Double whammy. We are certainly abetting corruption when we leave unconsumed rice in our plates.
Because of the unwarranted wastage in rice consumption, there is a move to re-introduce the Anti-Rice Wastage Act authored by then Senator Marcos Jr. This is mainly related to the initial serving of ½ cup of rice to customers in restos, and carinderias. That any resto owner who will not comply with this will be penalized. But that is just half of the scenario there. What about those customers who will abandon their plates with uneaten rice? This raises some problems, and complicates the situation.
In this regard, the restaurant owners association president was suggesting that instead of half-rice, the government should come up with a standard amount to be served to every customer. Whatever he means by that, and how it would minimize rice wastage is not easy also to comprehend.
The proposed Anti-Rice Wastage Act is directly related to our rice self-sufficiency situation, which means that we are short of our local rice production. This would be given due course in future issue.
Meantime, the responsible rice consumption by every one of us should be a serious matter to be given attention. It all starts at home through the parents and on to the children. We should always bear in mind that our population is still vigorously growing, requiring more land to build dwelling places. This results to the diminution of our agricultural lands.
It is up to us if we want a less problematic future. And if we want to continue providing more opportunities for unscrupulous government officials to steal some of our tax money.
BE RICESPONSIBLE.**
