By Xu Lingui 　

    LOS BANOS, the Philippines, June 4 (Xinhua) -- In the Philippines, rice is not just daily food, it is also a symbol of life sustaining a rice culture that the Filipinos have cultivated over hundreds of years.

    As rice prices hit record high in May in the world market, long queues of low-income Filipinos have frequently been seen at the government rice supply centers. They just cannot afford to lose rice on the table.

    Both the public and the government have admitted that a rice crisis is taking shape and the country, which aims to buy 2.6 million tons of foreign rice this year, must attain food self-sufficiency as the only way to secure supply.

    The government has been trying hard to work out a comprehensive plan which also includes increasing allotment to farmers, lifting import tariffs, and cracking down on boarding and control of distributions.

    At the world famous International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)in Los Banos, Laguna some 50 kilometers south of Manila, IRRI's top hybrid rice scientist expressed both hope and anxiety over the rice situation in the Philippines.

    Xie Fangming, senior scientist of plant breeding in IRRI, told Xinhua that he believes the country can attain self-sufficiency in three years if the government has a concrete, consistent and coherent policy to promote hybrid rice. However, he is dismayed by the fact that the Philippines, blessed with rich natural resources and the availability of technology, has to import rice from abroad for decades.

    Xie worked as the director of Line Development of RiceTec. Inc.in the United States before moving to IRRI three years ago. He was among the first batch of students studying under Yuan Longping, China's "Father of Hybrid Rice", who developed the cross-bred rice varieties to usher in an era of ample food supply for the world's most populous nation since 1970s.

    Almost four decades later, as shrinking global rice stockage pushes up the price of benchmark Thai rice to 1,000 U.S. dollars per ton, Xie said hybrid rice is back to the limeline again.

    So far the Philippine government's campaign to promote hybrid rice has largely been hampered by the absence of training and know-how supports to farmers and inefficient distribution policies of the seeds, he said.

    "The root problem facing hybrid rice programs in the Philippines lies in promotional policies and extension support. Technology is no longer an issue," said Xie.

    Although cross breeding was introduced to the Philippines earlier than other Asian nations, the benefits of the technology has failed to take roots. Fields to grow hybrid rice shrank from 400,000 hectares in 2006 to 120,000 hectares in 2007.

    But as the Philippines was hard squeezed by the global rice price surge and a tightened supply, the government has announced plans to boost hybrid rice plantation to 900,000 hectares, about 30 percent of the country's total rice fields, by the end of 2010.

    KNOWLEDGE GAP

    Compared to Vietnam, India and most recently Bangladesh, farmers in the Philippines have limited access to hybrid seeds and less access to the knowledge and training which are crucial to successful plantation, Xie said.

    "It is not about just changing the seeds. It is a different way of growing rice," he said, adding that the money of the government's boost production projects can be better spent by fixing the defected distribution system and launching massive knowledge support programs for farmers.

    In a separate interview, Henry Lim, president of the SL Agritech Corp., which distributes about 60 percent of the hybrid seeds planted in the Philippines, echoed Xie's claim, estimating that almost 90 percent of the Philippine farmers have no clear idea about what hybrid rice is, less do they know how to properly grow it.

    "If the government does not adopt more effective promotional measures, hybrid rice is doomed to fail," Lim said.

    The IRRI-developed hybrid seeds in the Philippines can easily lift up yields from average 3.5 tons per hectare to 5.8 tons per hectare with good cases surpassing 6 tons per hectare, scientists said.

    Xie said there are still doubts among Filipino farmers over the productivity with false conceptions saying hybrid rice demands more fertilizer usage. All these factors translated into a slow adoption of hybrid rice among farmers.

    Xie said growing hybrid rice does raise costs by 17 percent but higher costs are offset by the usually bigger yields increase.

    SUBSIDY SCHEME HIT

    The top hybrid rice scientist of IRRI urged the government to amend the current subsidy program which authorizes only one seed company from which farmers can buy hybrid rice seeds at half price with the government covering the other half.

    Xie said he is not against the government's financial support for hybrid rice but is actually calling for a better scheme that can both invite more companies to the market and arouse business enthusiasm in selling hybrid seeds to locals.

    Lim, whose company is the only authorized one to benefit from the subsidy scheme, said he does not favor the current scheme either. He said the company did not deal directly with farmers butlocal governments acted as a median. The process of collecting payment and particularly the subsidies becomes too long, sometime to the tenth month after farmers made the purchase.

    "The more the company participates in the subsidy scheme, the deeper it sinks into debts," Lim said, adding that his company then turned to the more profitable export business. SL Agritech exported 550 tons of hybrid rice seeds to Indonesia last year and 750 tons in the first half of this year.

    Lim said if there had not been a rice crisis at home, he would have inked another 1,000 tons export deal with Indonesian traders.

    POTENTIAL NOT TO BE WASTED

    Xie said warmer weather has allowed farmers to grow two seasons of rice in a year and domestic political scribbles seldom affect the country's agricultural sector, providing a relatively stable political environment.

    "The Philippines has highly remarkable environment to grow rice. In a scientist's point of view, it is hard to imagine a country with such blessings was reduced to importing rice for the last few decades."

    "If the distribution and training problems are being tackled," Xie said, "I see no problem for the Philippines to achieve the rice self-sufficiency target within three years."

    He applauded the government's vowed measures to raise domestic rice production but warned that the administration should stick to that goal and not to be tempted to importation even when rice prices, if ever, fall back to a low level.

    "Hold grains in hand, one has no worries at heart," he cites a catchy slogan of late Chinese leader Chairman Mao Zedong, as a living alarm to Filipinos of the importance of rice self-sufficiency.