Mahal kong Pilipinas (a post about inflation)

Everything is so dang expensive now! And while inflation is a natural occurrence in the economy, a 6.2% inflation is hardly natural. It had to be caused by something. In this post, I'd like to look at one thing whose price increase has the most effect on all Filipinos - rice.

I saw this one particular post which did make me think. It said that we're an agricultural country that imports rice. That in itself should give us pause. But it's not a new phenomenon. We've been importing rice since the time of GMA - or at least that's when I first remember it being an issue. No president since then has actually solved this problem and we're simply seeing the results now. So what is the problem?

Not enough people are going into farming. Since 2013, it's been news that the average age of farmers is 57 (source here: http://www.irinnews.org/feature/2013/02/26/filipino-farmers-dying-breed). Since this was news 5 years ago, I can only assume that the average farmer is a senior citizen! Why is this? We have so much land for agriculture and yet less young people are going into farming. Inquirer even reported as much way back in 2012! (see: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/223047/enrollment-in-agriculture-at-uplb-sharply-declines). What's happening?

I'll admit that the current administration has contributed to this by not addressing the core problem of the situation but let's not delude ourselves by saying this current administration is solely to blame. This problem was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and it simply chose to explode now. Now, if this was a ticking time bomb, who planted it? The answer can be short and simple. This ticking time bomb's name is CARP. And it actually fits with all the things we see today. CARP passed in 1988 so that means CARP has been around for 30 solid years. (Yes, 90s kids, 30 years ago means 1988, NOT 1970). That means that back then the average age for the farmer would be a healthier 30-40 years old. The problem is simply that because of CARP, the profession of farming has never looked pleasing to the younger generation. Why? Sure, the farmers could get land, but without capital to make the land produce anything, you basically have a farmer who gets poorer and poorer. So you have children of agricultural families not going into agriculture because they see that farmers don't get rich and stray in poverty longer than any other profession. Can you blame them for not going into farming?

So why is rice so expensive these days? Some people point to TRAIN. I, on the other hand point to CARP and of the two, CARP is definitely more responsible for the inflation we see right now.

Mahal kong Pilipinas, we need to stop these useless laws which border on socialist policies. In my humble opinion, government should simply try to get out of businesses as much as possible and should only step in when it puts actual harm into its citizens.