Since lawyers of the victim of Austria’s horrific dungeon master dad are considering suing the media for violations of her privacy (good for her), suddenly I am bereft of news updates. As usual, I was following the story with fascination due to open season in the European press on what must be the worst crime ever committed in post-Nazi era. Naturally I was so boiling mad with the monster that I had no reaction to recent concerns on rice prices and supply. After all, we never have such problems in Malaysia right? After the uproar over cooking oil and sugar supplies in recent times, I was confident that this was another hoarding-to-push-up-prices-fo-a-quick-profit issue. But, now that I have to do most of the shopping that my mum used to do, I am suddenly aware that the smiling face of Jalaluddin Hassan is missing from my rice packets. No wonder, because the price of the same bag of rice has gone up by more than RM5!!! I kid you not. Clueless as I am about what rice we eat at home, I only follow my mum’s instructions to buy ”beras Jalaluddin” and boy that woke me up! I couldn’t find his smiling face in the supermarket rice section and you know what, there were quite a few empty shelves where rice bags used to be piled high! What gives I wondered? On googling I discovered the doomsayers are predicting a world food crisis of not only rice but other staples. This CNN report “Rice Crisis or Reality Check” says:
Rice isn’t the only soft commodity to experience a sudden price surge. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food costs worldwide spiked 23 percent from 2006 to 2007. Grains rose 42 percent; edible oils 50 percent, and dairy products 80 percent. Corn, wheat and soybean futures have all set new records on the Chicago Board of Trade this past quarter. But rice is probably the most politically sensitive commodity on the market.
Somehow I knew politicians would be involved in this whole debacle. I don’t suppose people still remember the government policy to import rice rather than be self-sufficient would they? I am sure in the post-election euphoria, the promised magic solutions to ease the people’s woes have not been kept, no not unless they get to take over the country no less. Yeah sure, lower prices or better still give away everything for free - food, fuel and everything else for that matter. Bunkum!
Politics won’t feed the hungry and, as it so happens, the policies made by politicians could very well starve us. And don’t go blaming Pak Lah either because these policies were made way before he became Prime Minister. I know because I covered the Agriculture Ministry in those days and the then Minister explained this policy at length to us uninformed journalists. Incredulous! At the time the issue was also about rice but had something to do with rice millers and movement of rice between state boundarie. I remember asking why such a policy and the answer given then was that it was cheaper to import than to produce our own. Well and good until the currency crisis came and I remember that as we followed the fall of the ringgit on TV fixed to the ceiling of the editorial floor in NST, the pin drop silence echoed unspoken worries of starving masses as much of our food was imported. Needless to say, the same silence gripped the editorial floor when the reformasi riots happened a short time after. Who cares about the rakyat you say? Go figure!
The same CNN report gives you the real scenario:
According to the FAO, in real terms, current commodity prices are similar to the highs experienced during the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s, and are much lower than the levels observed in the 1970s. ”We believe grain prices in general, especially wheat and maize, have been exceptionally low for a long time. It’s a reflection of the way the U.S. and Europe encouraged surplus production. This discouraged developing countries from producing food because they couldn’t produce at subsidized prices of industrialized nations,” FAO’s Abbassian remarks.
Now there has been a flurry of decisions about opening land in Sabah and Sarawak to plant padi. Well, what do you say to that? Pour some of that free petrol then so you can make the rice grow faster. Yeah for sure! And I am being sarcastic to the max! Politics won’t feed us but policies by politicians can very likely kill us. Don’t give me the bullshit about who I should or should not vote for either! I shall always remember that when they changed the name of Universiti Pertanian Malaysia to Universiti Putra Malaysia, the rumblings of protest from academicians who wanted the only and oldest agriculture university in the country to remain focused on agriculture was so abruptly ignored. You see, the university’s proximity to the Multimedia Super Corridor had something to do with it. Malaysia was so rich at the time that we didn’t imagine that one day all we may have to eat is worthless ringgit notes! Can money overcome the causes of rice short supply that there might not even be enough for previously rice exporting coutries to export? Heck, even if local rice is costly, at least we would still eat. So where does that put us? I say please put Jalaluddin’s smiling face back on my supermarket shelves I tell you!!! Better the actor than all those politicians put together!! Try posturing in Parliament when you are starving eh!
Read this report “Food crisis adds 100M to ranks of hungry: expert” and weep!:
The crisis has been triggered in part by such factors as population growth, the increasing use of food stocks as biofuel and changing consumption patterns in China and India, they said. But it likely could have been avoided if governments hadn’t started cutting their investments in agricultural research and infrastructure in the early 1990s. Had that not happened, Mr. Zeigler said, “I don’t think we would be in this situation.”
