Philippines Rice Sufficient in 2010?

Todays headlines in the newspapers caught my attention. IRRI assured GMA that the Philippines would be Rice Sufficient comes 2010.

With years of existence of IRRI (International Rice Research Institute)in the Philippines, would you agree that this will materialize in 2010? This is again a strategy of the Arroyo government to ease the Filipino people on the problems of rice crisis in our country today. She's giving us falsehopes, again.

Should we say that IRRI is an ineffective institution in helping the Filipinos solve rice crisis. I do agree that IRRI was able to developed so many varieties and high yeilding rice. They even help other countries in developing and providing them with best variety of palay. But how about the Philippines? We do the research and development but we do not benefit from this.

Or should we blame again the government for failure to address the real problems in the agriculture sector. According to some economists, GMA is unwittingly driving the international prices of rice. Because of our problems here, other Asian countries are now forming rice cartels. We cant even find enough bidders for our rice importation.

How about the current Agriculture Secretary, Arthur Yap? Is he efficient in his job. With months of suffering from high prices of rice, still the agriculture secretary is assuring the Filipinos that there is no crisis. That NFA rice is reaching its intended beneficiaries, the poor. But how about other filipinos, who are not "considered poor" but is also affected by this situation. With so many pronouncement nby the Agriculture Secretary, we can't even feel the effects of his solution to the problems

They have to bear in mind that the Philippines is not a country of poor filipinos only. There are other sectors that should be taken into consideration.