Rice imports are the number of metric tons pertaining to rice products entering a country's borders in a given year. Rice has been a major food for us. Here in our country, there are a lot of convenience food chains that offer ‘unli rice’ to people who love to eat rice. We export rice to other countries to continue the flow of dollar in our country and be able to have connections to other countries to supply our needs.
I chose this topic because I see the issues regarding the overpricing of rice, and the beyond reasonable payment to the farmers. The exporting of products has suddenly tightened because of the issue regarding the overpricing of products specifically rice. The Rice Tariffication Law ensures food security by liberalizing rice imports and making farming globally competitive. According to Jire Carreon from Rappler, “the oversupply of rice in the market already means prices should drop”. However, Co noted that retail rice prices are still somewhat high. People are too greedy when it comes to money that even though they have received too much supply instead of decreasing the price they tend to increase it even higher. Now we cannot export rice easily because how can we help others if we are the one who is in need of help.
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The Rice Tariffication Law is the reason why our local farmers have low salaries. This law makes all the imported rice cheaper because it causes the other countries to pay tariff tax when want to export their rice to our country. For Southeast Asian Countries they pay 35% tariff while non-ASEAN members pay 50% tariff or the tariff dictated by the World Trade Organization. According to Arida, “The results revealed that common problems encountered by rice farmers were: the high cost of inputs, low price of palay, lack of capital, labor problem, lack of post-harvest facilities, pest and diseases, and irrigation system”. The farmers are obligated to sell their palay to the businessman at a low cost simply because they need the money to supply their need and to pay their debts. Now the farmers are the one who is starving because of the high cost of inputs, and the low price of palay. The government does not make any necessary action regarding this issue Instead, they are arguing about non-sense things. The farmers need a lot of support from the government because of the things that they need that they cannot afford.
In order to solve this problem, the government should remove the Rice Tariffication Law and focus more on our local farmers instead of being busy on how to make imported rice affordable. With the imported rice being cheaper the consumers will buy the cheaper rice instead because they need to pay a lot of bills, and in order to save money, they will buy the cheaper one because it is affordable. And no one will buy our local rice. But as a consumer, and as a Filipino, in order to help our local rice farmers, we need to tell the government units that instead of buying imported rice, they should buy rice in our local farmers. Having more markets that sell local rice can also help. With the power of media, the information about the problems and situation that deals with our local farmers are in need to be spread so that other media users can have an idea or knowledge about the situation that our country is dealing with. Asking fast food companies to buy local rice will be extremely helpful since many Filipinos eat at fast food chains.
Rice importations have some benefits and side effects in our country. It increases our rice stocks and helps consumers because of cheaper rice but our local farmers are the ones who are not getting any benefits to it. In conclusion, we should not be relying on other countries to get some huge amounts of rice because our local farmers are the one that is being most affected by it, instead we should appreciate more and give more attention to our farmers because they are the one who is suffering to this kind of situation.
As students we can help our local rice farmers that are facing this crisis by using modern technologies, with the use of technology these days spreading the information to other people about the crisis of our local farmers can be an easy task for everyone. The other people who get to know about the situation will also be encouraged not by just spreading the news but also making action to it. We can also help them by asking the government to focus more on our local farmers instead of how can we import rice. We know that with the power of youth our government will listen to us.
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