DA: 'Very difficult' to achieve rice target

ACHIEVING rice self-sufficiency will have to take a while as population growth continues to outpace productivity improvements, an Agriculture department official said on Monday.

«It is very difficult to attain 100 percent, as there is still a lot to be done,» Agriculture Assistant Secretary Arnel de Mesa told reporters.

De Mesa claimed that local productivity was rising but added that the department also had to deal with population growth.

"[T]he latest statistics now show that [our population] is more than 110 million," he said.

Based on the last official census, the population of the Philippines was a little over 109 million as of May 1, 2020. Current estimates place the number at just under or at 118 million as of 2023.

The country is one of the biggest consumers of rice in the world, with domestic consumption estimated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to hit 16.5 million metric tons for 2023-2024.

Local rice production falls short of that number, with the USDA projecting output of 12.6 million MT for the same period. Rice self-sufficiency, based on Philippine Statistics Authority data, was at 77 percent last year, dropping from 81.5 percent in 2021.

Demand for the grain has made the Philippines one of the world's biggest rice importers — the USDA has said that the country has overtaken China to top the global list — and made it vulnerable to supply shortages and price spikes.

Supply issues this year alone have led to domestic price surges, fueling inflation and prompting the government to briefly order a cap on rice prices.

Government after government has adopted rice self-sufficiency as a target, but the goal has yet to be achieved. Most recently President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who also heads the Agriculture department, claimed that 100 percent could be exceeded via a host of initiatives.

In the short term, the Marcos government is targeting 97.4 percent rice self-sufficiency by the end of its term in 2028.

De Mesa echoed this, saying «we are not expecting that in a few years, we are at 100 percent, but the target of the government is to go near perhaps 95 to 97 percent for the coming years.»

He attributed last year's low self-sufficiency level