OPPapers.com

Rice Production And Consumption Trends In Negros Oriental

RICE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION
TRENDS IN NEGROS ORIENTAL

By

Julhusin B. Jalisan

Introduction

Negros Oriental, endowed with a healthy agricultural climate, is haven to skillful and hardworking farmers who for ages have nurtured and enriched the province's soil, giving birth to a paradise of abounding farm and plantation. With agriculture as the lifeblood of its economy, about 56 percent of its total land area have been cultivated as agricultural lands, with approximately five percent are utilized for the production of palay (Provincial Development and Investment Plan, 2002).

Through struggling years of treading the land with ardor and dedication borne out of the farmers' intensive labor, rice production remains the key source of livelihood and sustenance of its constituents, especially the rural folks who are fundamentally dependent on agronomic yield.

While the province of Negros Oriental has not experienced any acute food shortage, one of the concerns of the policy-makers has been to attain sufficiency in food supply particularly rice. However, it has been observed that the rice industry has not been able to effectively tap its potentials and meet the increasing demands of the growing population. This inability to effectively close the gap between the demand for all supply of rice has been the reason for resorting to importation.

Considering the above premises, there is therefore a need for a study on the prevailing conditions of rice production in the province.

Review of Related Literature and Studies

The touchstone thinking on the adequacy of the food supply goes back to the time of Malthus, a British economist of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (1766-1843). Malthus observed that food resources increase by the process of addition -- that is, by arithmetic progression -- but that population increases by multiplication, or in geometric progression. He further observed that population inevitably increases up...