Number one sign is our having to import rice.
The countries we are importing rice from are our neigh boring countries. Their bright citizens learned rice technology from us. For decades, they had been sending as scholars their good students to UP Los Banos where they became agricultural scientists. In the ‘70s Thais, Vietnamese, Malaysians, Indonesians, even Micronesians were common sights in that campus. Now we are begging them to sell to us rice.
Not just Asians . There were some from as far away as Africa such as Nigerians.
As one of our columnists, Danny Padua, Pd.D., said, we can be self-sufficient in rice in a short while. The problem is the corruption in government which is barring us from using the right technology and from pouring our available resources at the right places.
Ours is an agricultural country and any seed you throw around can literally grow, and yet here we are.
Another reliable sign is our having to import fish. One of the headlines yesterday was the country’s program to import 25 tons of fish this year. What?!*#? We, a country of more than 7,000 islands, are going to import fish? Something big must be very wrong.
There is water everywhere where all sorts of fish can thrive. Even here in mountainous Cordillera we have so many rivers, creeks and lakes where fish can become prolific to enrich our people and to abundantly supply our protein needs.
Either our heads are not in the right places or there is not enough gray matter in them, especially, those in government.
Thus, another big news today says it all, “46% of Filipinos feel poor.”
The big problem is government, which means the people running it. And we, you and I, voted for them to be there.**