At the National Food Summit on April 6, President Glorial Macapagal Arroyo proposed the FIELDS program to address the Philippine rice crisis. FIELDS stands for Fertilizer, Irrigation and Infrastructure, Extension and Education, Loans and Insurance, Dryer and Post-Harvest Facilities, and Seeds. The government promises to develop farm to market roads, educate farmers and fishermen on new technology, secure more money for agricultural credit, enact a law that will allow farm lands as loan collateral, etc. etc. (PIA)
While this all sounds very nice on the surface level, there’s a difference between putting up a public-relations show (and throwing short-term solutions while you’re at it) and taking serious actions to avert the rice crisis completely. What is the government actually doing?
To begin with, rice shortage has been a problem for many years now.The feudal nature of Philippine agriculture and the fact that President Arroyo has been selling out agricultural lands to real estate developers and cash-croppers is part of the reason why local farmers are unable to meet the country’s demand for rice. The government’s brilliant plan to contain the rice shortage is to depend on imports from Thailand, Vietnam, and China instead of implementing programs to improve our own agricultural production. Now that our suppliers are restricting their produce and raising prices by as much as 50% to curb the demand, Filipinos are starting to feel the very real effects of our country’s rice problem.
In the papers today, I read that the National Food Authority (NFA) is proposing a gradual price increase on NFA rice over the next couple of months because to sell low-quality government-subsidized rice at Php 18.25/kilo would be “bad economics” and “unrealistic”.Right, because making people pay more money for less rice is the way to help people deal with the rice shortage. According to the NFA Administrator Jessup Navarro, the government raised the farm gate price from Php 12 to Php 17 to boost farmers’ incomes and motivate them to produce more.
If you think the profits of the NFA price increase will be going to the farmers, you’re seriously mistaken. The private sector dominates and controls the distribution and marketing of rice - approximately 95% of local rice production is overseen by private merchants. The rice cartel not only controls the distribution and price of rice; they also act as moneylenders to which farmers are heavily indebted to. (Consumers International) Every planting season, farmers need a capital of around Php 20,000/hectare for fuel for tractors, pesticides, and fertilizers. In jumps the moneylenders to lend them money or supplies. Since they don’t have cash at hand, farmers have to sell their rice back to the moneylender at a price lower than the current Php 14/kilo buying price. This explains the irony of why rice farmers have to line up at distribution centers to buy NFA rice, just like everyone else. To repay their debts, poor farmers have sell most or all of their harvested cavans at a loss.
And as if things can’t get any worse, the rice cartel is making things worse by hoarding NFA rice, repackaging them as commercial rice, and selling them at jacked-up prices. (Inquirer)
I don’t even know where to begin proposing long-term solutions to the rice crisis. Agrarian reform, less reliance on imports, the elimination of the rice cartel, the prioritization of rice production over cash cropping – all of this sounds good to me. Another way of looking at the problem is in terms of overpopulation - Filipinos are popping out more babies than our farmers can feed because the Church says using condoms is bad. The question is – can we rely on our government to do something concrete to avert the rice crisis before people starve and start rioting on the streets? The NFA can’t even maintain the low price of cheap, poor-quality rice.
Burgonio, TJ. “It’s Inevitable—NFA rice to cost more.” Philippine Daily Inquirer. 13 April 2008. A2.
Disclaimer: This article isn’t an attack on Filipina Hearts. I merely used this site an example of how dating websites capitalize and commodify the Filipina. While I am aware that there are lonely singles that use these sites for the legitimate reason of seeking companionship, it still does not change the fact that these websites reduce the Filipina into a consumer object. That is what I am against.
Filipino women are stereotyped to be simple, obedient, caring, and God-fearing. That’s why it’s no big surprise when the keyword “Filipina” yields a bunch of dating websites catering specifically to men in search of Filipinas for love, friendship, and marriage. One could argue that there’s nothing wrong with using dating websites to find life partners with the qualities mentioned above. Most dating websites are legal, legitimate, and the participating Filipinas join the dating pool out of their own free will. That doesn’t discount the fact that these dating websites capitilize on the exoticized Filipina. Dating websites don’t spring out of the woodwork and match people around the world out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re a business selling products, and their products happen to be the Filipina. This essay shows how this system works by examining a dating website called Filipina Hearts.
Filipina Heart claims to be the largest singles network used by Filipinos looking for love. If Filipinos male and female singles were their target market, I would find no issue with the site; however, the site brands itself as Filipina Hearts, which is enough to suggest what a potential member can expect to experience. In fact, one doesn’t have to look very hard to show that the site primarily offers single Filipinas for companionship: pictures of featured Filipina members are shown on the front page, along with their name, age, and location (the Philippines).
Below the featured profiles is a longer description of the website’s purpose. It states that Filipina Hearts
is a specialty Filipina dating and Filipina personals web site that focuses on bringing together Filipino men and Filipina women as well as others seeking a Filipina pen pal, Filipina chat, Filipina dating or a Filipina girl friend. Filipino men can also search for a Filipina lady for Filipino marriage. You can find the perfect Filipina friend from within our extensive database featuring 1000’s of Filipina singles and Filipina personals.
Although the site claims to be an avenue for Filipinos to meet, the above description primarily focuses on the availability of the Filipina for men and promises that among the thousands of Filipinas on the site, there has got to be one who will make a perfect match for each male subscriber. In other words, Filipina Hearts is not a social networking site. It is a glorified catalog of single Filipina women who will provide for men’s social and emotional needs, be it a friendly chat or a more serious relationship.
I placed emphasis on the word “will” because there is some guarantee that some form of communication will take place - Filipina Hearts is a paid dating site. Anyone can set up a profile for free but a member cannot start communicating with a Filipina on the site unless he gets a paid membership. Paying for a service means that the client will get the service in return. There is always the chance that he may not find his future wife through Filipina Heart but at the very least, he will get an e-mail or two. That’s the beauty of the system – it does not out and out guarantee that the site will provide a member with a girl; what it gives is simply the chance for “true love” and this chance costs USD 24.99 a month (USD 29.99 for the platinum membership).
Now I’d like to take a little detour and explain why it doesn’t make sense for a Filipinos to use this site to find a fellow Filipina for marriage. There are many social networking sites used predominantly by Filipinos to connect and reconnect with each other – Friendster, Multiply, and recently, Facebook. The main advantage of these social networking sites – besides its large Filipino network – is that they provide their services for free. Most Filipinos don’t have the money to throw away on paid social networking sites. Even if they do, it doesn’t make sense to pay a third party matchmaker to find a mate when surfing for someone sharing the same interests can be done using free websites.
More important than the use of social networking sites for dating purposes is that for most Filipinos, the best matchmakers are their family members and friends. Philippine society is a highly stratified society, and the average Filipino does not mingle outside the social class he/she belongs to. This means that romantic relationships among Filipinos are born through the closed network of friends of friends (or family friends). This social arrangement is more effective in terms of finding a mate because chances are high that two people from the same network will have the same educational status, work in related industries, share similar interests, etc.
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule but the fact that I am speaking in generalities further proves my point. Filipino males could not have been the website’s target market.
Why did I place so much emphasis on the site’s target market? Because dating websites that offer the Filipina as a commodity only reinforces two international stereotype of the Filipina. First, that she is the victim of third world poverty, and marriage to a Westerner is the gold ticket out for her and her family. Second, unlike women with Western sensibilities, the stereotyped Filipina is the “perfect wife”. She’s smart but she’s non-confrontational and submissive, which means she won’t create conflicts by arguing or talking back. She’s Catholic, which means she won’t divorce her husband no matter how badly she’s treated. She grew up in a very gendered society, which means that she will be more than happy to cook, clean, and bear babies. Such is the image of the Filipina as portrayed by dating websites.
This post is a submission to the Philippine Encyclopedia Filipina Stories writing contest. I am a Filipina and I would make a terrible wife someday. Support the Filipina Images campaign and subvert the stereotype of the Filipina online!
Business process outsourcing (BPO) is the practice of using a third party company to perform certain aspects of a business. BPOs include call centers, IT-related services, medical and legal transcription, web development, and software development, among others. Although outsourcing provides many benefits to the company, the primary reason for outsourcing is to reduce costs by hiring workers from third world countries that provide cheap labor. India is the largest force in the outsourcing market today, occupying 40% of the $45 billion market, with the Philippines following close as top BPO destination. (Smerd) Our country’s BPO sector is the fastest-growing, with call center jobs accounting for 112,000 out of the 233,000 employed in early 2006. (Economist Intelligence Unit)
On the surface level, job opportunities from BPOs seem like manna from heaven. The average starting pay for a college graduate ranges from Php 13,000 to 15,000 a month – enough for a single person in his or her early twenties to become financially independent, and then some. The reality is that not all Filipinos have the skills to take advantage of these global job opportunities. Only three out of every one hundred college graduates get hired by call centers and other BPOs; the rest fail to pass the qualifying exams due to their difficulty with the English language. (Flores) Since the Philippines is aiming for a 10% share of the market by 2010, BPOs have no choice but to improve their hiring rate.
The solution? The Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) proposes that universities and colleges collaborate with BPOs in training students to fill in positions in the outsourcing industry so our country can keep up with the demands of the market and retain its competitive edge. (Llanto) Should they agree to implement this “updated” curriculum, then our educational institutions will have failed our students. Instead of producing graduates with critical minds, our schools will be manufacturing white collar sweatshop workers serving companies who are only interested in keeping their costs low. It goes without saying that a college education is not cheap either; even students at the state university (where one unit costs Php 1,000 “only”) have difficulty making ends meet. What they will be paying for is not an education, but a glorified training program hiding behind the mask of the academe.
On one hand, I do realize that BPOs provide jobs that put food on the table and pay for the rent. Outsourced jobs in the animation, software development, and writing sub-sectors can also be an avenue for a person to develop his or her creative skills. Unless the BPAP actually alters college curricula to serve the interests of BPOs, my real problem with the industry lies in the people who support it. Working to provide a living for your family - that I can understand. But what about the single twenty-somethings who actually fall for how BPOs market themselves as the “perfect job”? The ones who are proud to be call center agents because they now have the means to participate in a consumerist culture and be seen dining at pretentious places like Bonifacio High Street for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The ones who fail to recognize or acknowledge the fact that to first world superpowers like the US or the UK, the Philippines is nothing more than a source of cheap, disposable labor. And no thanks to our wonderful President, who keeps pimping our services to foreign investors, a dead-end job is probably all your college education will ever amount you to.
Sources
The Economist Intelligence Unit, Philippines Country Profile; 2007, p1-45, 45p
Flores, Alena. “Only 3% get call center positions”. Manila Standard Times. <http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=news03_jan06_2006>
Llanto, Jose. “Industry Experts: RP Should Go Beyond Call Centers”. Newsbreak. <http://www.newsbreak.com.ph/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4165&Itemid=88889053>
Smerd, Jeremy. Workforce Management; 10/8/2007, Vol. 86 Issue 17, p6-6, 3/4p, 1c