ADDRESSING the issue of rising food prices in his State of the Nation Address, President Aquino laid down a stern warning to rice hoarders, threatening them with financial ruin when the government floods the market with low-cost shipments of the staple:
“When the additional rice we have imported arrives in the country, hoarders will be forced to sell the rice that they have stockpiled in their warehouses. To these hoarders: If a showdown is what you want, by all means, take on the government. Just remember: it only takes six months before the stock you have hoarded in your warehouses begins to rot. When we flood the market with this imported rice, you will surely go bust. You are acting against the Filipino people, while we are acting for the interest of each Filipino. Let us see who will prevail.”
Does rice really start rotting after six months? Given the context -- a government seeking to bask in the limelight of a SONA -- asking the question might seem rude. But most Filipinos know their rice rather well, some might even say intimately, and on the face of it, six months seems a bit short. And President Aquino DID say that he might base his anti-hoarding policy on the theory that hoarders can’t afford to wait out six months. In the interest of preventing the government from doing potentially expensive things based on flawed assumptions, we sought to find out what the actual shelf life of rice is.
On the low end, the United States Department of Agriculture estimates that uncooked rice is shelf-stable for about two years. All you need to know about that sort of timeline is that after two years, the Aquino administration will have expired, presumably leaving the hoarders sitting pretty with their still-edible stashes of rice.
On the high end, the website eatbydate.com gives the shelf life of rice at 4-5 years -- and as much as 25-30 years when stored in vacuum containers. This much is well known by survivalists in the United States, who store food in anticipation of a nuclear apocalypse. To be completely fair, the site does give the shelf life of brown rice and wild rice as 6-8 months -- which means the spoilage time of these varieties comes the closest to the President’s 6-month estimate for time-to-rot.
It is highly doubtful, however, that the President was referring to brown rice or wild rice in his speech. But it does raise the fascinating question of whether the President’s staff consists exclusively of elitist wild-rice eaters, who (unlike most citizens) can afford to pay the hefty premium over white rice, and who by feeding the President false information about shelf lives may have revealed themselves to be out of touch with daily realities.
What might account for the disparity between the long estimates for the shelf life of rice given by US sources and the much shorter estimates for the Philippines? It could be that packing methods, climate, or pests are a big problem here. The real worry might be that rice traders, for one reason or another, don't know how to store their rice properly, and that the food security of the Philippines might depend on an entire industry changing its ways so the produce lasts longer. But that's a story for another day.
It's always a worthwhile exercise to nitpick the President's claims, particularly when he takes his annual victory lap around Congress, because greater truths can be revealed even in small things. One of the truths we may have just have discovered is that when the President threatens rice hoarders with bankruptcy after six months, it is possible that the hoarders already know he is bluffing. -- Troy Medina
source: Businessworld
No comments:
Post a Comment