“A diet of rice plus instant noodles has led to malnutrition and stunting, breeding a nation of—I hate to say it— future morons”
It certainly is a welcome development in the Manila Bay reclamation issue that the president has ordered a halt to the 22 different projects rushed for approval by the Philippine Reclamation Authority and given the requisite ECCs by the DENR prior to Sec. Toni Yulo-Loyzaga’s appointment.
We can only hope a thorough review of all these are done by the DENR and even the local governments within whose municipal waters some of these projects may be located.
We do not know if the president was referring to the New Manila International Airport in Bulakan, Bulacan, a privately financed undertaking of San Miguel Corporation, as the only one which has passed scrutiny.
Truth is, technically speaking, SMC did not reclaim from the sea by dumping sand into newly-created islands, unlike what is happening in the Manila Bay reclamation projects.
They bought titled properties through many years, some of them rice fields converted into fishponds, and augmented the height of the property above sea level.
What were properties with very little value from which the municipality hardly earned from property taxes became highly valued land on which an aerotropolis with a 4-runway international airport would be built.
That airport will be a magnet for foreign investments in electronics and other types of manufacturing aside from servicing the travel requirements which the NAIA with its single long runway cannot adequately serve.
The islands being built by dumping sand into the Manila Bay, on the other hand, is for real estate development by speculators who find reclamation cheaper than expensive mainland real estate.
These will be sold to the very rich, many of them foreigners from China, Korea and elsewhere, while the mainland will be re-populated by the construction workers who will have no other option but to live as informal settlers in our squatter colonies.
While there may be gleaming new cities in the reclaimed islands, the inner Metro Manila will rapidly decline into urban decay.
Yet there is so much land in the suburbs, whether in eastern Rizal, northeastern Bulacan, or southern Laguna, and much more in other provinces where, once upon a time, government declared a policy of decongesting the metropolis and developing the countryside.
This writer has always maintained opposition to reclamation projects in Manila Bay for reasons we have kept enumerating in this space.
Instead, the national government should be serious about moving the government center and its many offices outside NCR, and President Marcos Jr. should take the lead.
Whatever happened to the hundreds of hectares reserved for a National Government Center in Clark? Even the DoTr which during Sec. Tugade’s stint had moved there is now back in the metropolis.
If the national government moves out of Metro Manila, prices of real estate should then go down, as supply will be more available for private sector development.
Think of the military camps, the NAIA complex of some 640 hectares, the government complex around Quezon Memorial, and many others that could be sold to raise funds while augmenting the supply of land for private commercial and residential uses.
* * *
It may be time also for the national government to think out of the box when it comes to resolving the perennial under-supply of rice as our staple food commodity.
I refer to promoting the consumption as well as production of substitutes like white corn, camote and saba bananas.
Before Masagana 99 made rice affordable, even if only for a few years, before overpopulation and corresponding demand caught up with meager supply, many in the Visayas and Mindanao subsisted on these crops.
I remember then Prof. Leonor Briones who hails from Negros Oriental mention this to me when I headed the NFA—why not promote these alternative staples?
But when I advocated a stop to “unli-rice” marketing practices by some fastfood purveyors, media roundly condemned the idea.
Demand management may be difficult, and it may take time to bear fruit, but it deserves a second look.
And we should start with the young, who, whether at home or in school, should be taught proper nutritional habits, including less carbohydrate consumption.
DA on the other hand, should propagate such alternative staples, especially in areas where these were traditional food crops, while exerting all efforts at producing more vegetables and fish as cheap source of protein.
For many of our urban poor, carbo-loading is the only recourse because viands are expensive.
And a diet of rice plus instant noodles has led to malnutrition and stunting, breeding a nation of—I hate to say it—future morons.