We recall distinctly that then Senate President Ferdinand Marcos beat incumbent President Diosdado "Dadong" Macapagal in the 1965 presidential elections.

One of the issues then was the high price of rice and the wily Ilocano ridiculed the Poor Man from Lubao (Pampanga) as Mr. Makamahal (for Macapagal).

In a rice-eating nation of 90 million folks, rice is a sensitive socio-political issue that can create a deja vu scenario for the heiress of the Macapagal Palace throne: daughter President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. If things do not improve - the shit will hit the fan into the faces of GMA and allies - on 2010 election day - or earlier.

You can tell Filipinos to bear 6-hour brownouts - as they were told years ago - and to be happy with soap operas, watching PBA and Manny Pacquiao and bear Lucky Me noodles - morning, noon and night. You can tell them to live in shanties - as long as there is roof above their heads. You can tell them to walk - not ride - if the transport cost goes crazy.

The Filipinos will grin and bear it - remember they are one of the happiest races in the world.

But do not ever-ever-tell - the 72 million Filipinos dependent on rice as staple food to cut down on rice consumption because there is not enough for everyone or the price will hit P40 per kilo (as it did in Quezon last Monday). That's a formula for potential food riots as had happened in Africa and Mexico recently.

Alas and alack, the country is part of the world global economy. And the fact is food prices over the world had gone up by 35% from 2007 to 2008. The rise in food prices clearly exceeds the earnings or income growth of most people.

These days are not the best of days. The price of Dubai crude oil has hit US$ 111 per barrel (an all time high) and the United States is in the brink of a major recession.

Maybe not in a state of Depression as in the 1920s - but it is going to be "ugly" as Time Magazine puts it.

As they say: when your neighbor loses his job - that is Recession.

When you lose yours - that is Depression. The United States may not be there yet - but its hiccups have sent cold shivers to almost every nation directly or indirectly.

There are 12 million Filipinos who can make do without rice, maybe - as a matter of habit or choice. They live on corn, bread and root crops (kamote, turnips) and bananas.

Unfortunately the price of wheat is 20% higher today than the last decades and there is corn shortage in corn-growing Cebu. And wheat is a major component of flour used for our bread.

The supply of rice is at its lowest in the last 20 years and the price at its highest in the last 34 years. The Philippines devour 11 million metric tons per year but we cannot supply enough of it to our people. In fact from a mere 800,000 metric tons of rice importation in 1996, the Philippines will now have to import 2.4 million metric tons in 2008.

The rice crisis that faces the nation now - no matter how the GMA crew disclaims its existence - is caused both by internal and external reasons.

Internally, there are issues of fertilizer, irrigation, post-harvest facilities lack, scarcity of financing, land mis-usage, smuggling, corruption at NFA and wastage by Filipinos.

Thirty percent of the cost of producing palay is: fertilizer. And yet we have one Jocjoc Bolante, a Department of Agriculture Undersecretary who allegedly used P700 million of fertilizer funds for the election bid of his Patron GMA and cohorts in the 2004 election.

They should struggle with their conscience today - with this crisis.

There are overpriced irrigation facilities (by billions) including reportedly the Bayongan Dam (BHIP2) of Bohol according to ex-NEDA Director Romy Neri, many of which (because of the absence of a network of riverlets unlike Vietnam and Thailand) are actual, semi or virtual white elephants.

Shouldn't overprice and the inefficient use of interest-bearing loans for these dams been used instead to build post-harvest facilities (drying and rice milling), financing for farmers (for fertilizers and inputs) and farm-to-market roads that should help make the Filipino farmer prosper?

In the name of progress, the country has allowed many rich lands to become golf courses, subdivisions and malls - that there is little land to plant rice on. With the wide berthing areas of our islands, the archipelago has also allowed virtual rice smuggling in abandon - apparently with approval from Someone Upstairs. That evil deed deprives the country its tariff tax collections and kills the local farmer-grower.

The conniving NFA agents and Satan's Crew spirit out NFA rice and sell it commercially - depriving the poor of the subsidized staple food. Meantime band-aid cures like pleading with Macdonald, Jollibee and Chowking to dispense with half-a-rice order are made front page news. And yet truly, we are a nation that cooks more rice than we need - at home and restaurants that we waste about 25 million kilos of rice everyday - according to DA secretary Arthur Yap.

Externally, the country is facing a formidable array of problems that abet the rice shortage: bad weather, population growth, biofuel upsurge, increased prosperity of huge nations, and beggar thy neighbor attitude of some nations.

Droughts in the Australian continent, flooding in Vietnam, Thailand and West Africa, and winter frost in some Chinese towns and overall climate change has affected the rice output the world over.

Population, of course, has grown tremendously over the years (the Earth will have 9 billion inhabitants by 2020?) and many Chinese people -now richer by the millions- are buying more, including staple food.

China and India (over a billion people each) only produce enough rice for their populace while rice-producers like Vietnam and Thailand are cutting rice exports in a - starve thy neighbor - policy.

Finally, there is the more serious problem of the planting of alternative sources of biofuels. Worldwide there is a tremendous upsurge in investments in biofuels - making land more and more less available for planting staple food like rice, corn, wheat etc.

Biofuel investments rose from a mere US$5 billion in 1995 to US$38 billion in 2005 and USS100 billion possibly by 2010.

This is what economists say as "the remorseless economics of commodity markets" - and the rice and food shortage is causally dismissed as part of the "law on unintended consequences." An inconvenient truth, as Al Gore would put it.

All said, the world is facing toughest times ahead - and the Philippines will be severely affected.

Tighten your belts - and brace up for shock waves at the next corner.

And Government should stop playing cute - and to not behave in denial. That's insult to injury.

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