フィリピン食糧危機の政策要因 : 市場原理主義批判

Abstract

The Philippines has faced severe rice shortage since the mid 1980's after the country had reached rice self-sufficiency during late 70's and the mid 80's. In 1995 the Philippines experienced very severe rice crisis. Then the mass media reported that the reasons for the crisis were crop failure caused by drought and locust attack and rice concealment by merchants. But based on my past studies of rice and food policy of the country I hypothesized that the reason was not such short run factors but a long run policy characteristic of the country. Since 1987 the Aquino government has transformed the country's rice and food policy from food security oriented one to the one for liberalization based on the idea of benefits of free trade or structural adjustment that had been enforced by policy makers and neoclassical economists. The Ramaos government has followed the same policy and has liberalized domestic rice and food policy and international trade of rice and food during the 90's. This paper has found that this policy transformation was the basic cause of the rice shortage. This transformation had made the real price of paddy at the farm gate continue to decline from around 4.5 peso/kg in 1975 to 2.5 in 1995. This lead to the stagnation of rice yield and rice production after 1980. Stagnation in the improvement of rice technology has persisted after around 1980 caused by the stagnation in the rice research expenditures that is partly a result of the policy transformation mentioned just above. Soil degradation is said to be caused by the increase in the frequency of rice cultivation per year in the Philippines. Stagnation in irrigation investment has been continuing. On the demand side, population explosion and income growth have contributed to fast increase in the demand for rice. All of these supply and demand factors have resulted in the rice shortage in the Philippines, but I think especially the transformation of rice and food policy has had the strongest impact. This transformation is the application of the idea of benefits of free trade that is taught in neoclassical economics lectures assuming liberalization will result in the Pareto optimum where consumers' welfare and producers' profit are maximized. But this idea is inherently wrong in an Asian developing country such as the Philippines where the huge rice eating poor exist and they suffer when liberalization causes severe rice shortage. The rice and food policy of the Philippines must be redirected toward food security assurance with fair and appropriate government intervention to rice market.