PHILIPPINES: Rice is Life, But Devalued in Modern Society

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Marites Sison

MANILA, Mar 2 2003 (IPS) - Rice is food and drink, and medicine. Rice is ritual and remembrance. Rice is ornamental. Rice is history. It is the lifeblood of the Philippines, but needs to be saved from being devalued to just a plant in today’s fast-paced, consumerist society, artists and cultural experts say.

In truth, it is "the grain that has shaped the culture, diet, economy and even politics” of this South-east Asian country, says Corazon Alvina, executive director of the National Museum.

The grandest expression of the Filipinos’ affinity to rice is the Banawe Rice Terraces in the northern Philippines, which were built by indigenous people some 2,000 years ago to grow and irrigate rice, and cascade over an area of 2,560 sq km. It is a World Heritage Site.

Yet many Filipinos look at rice "only in terms of botany and economics; as a source of nutrition and livelihood," adds Emil Javier, director of the Asia Rice Foundation, one among the international organisations doing research on rice based in the Philippines.

Globalisation, urbanisation, and inroads of western culture have "caused the decline in public knowledge and appreciation of our rice cultural heritage," says Alvina.

This situation is true not just for the Philippines – home to an 80 million-strong rice-eating population – but the whole of Asia, where 90 percent of the world’s rice is produced and eaten.

The decline in the appreciation for rice is such that the United Nations has declared 2004 as the International Year of Rice. As part of this campaign, the Asia Rice Foundation has drawn support from writers and artists – the custodians of a people’s culture.

The prescription to mobilise the cultural sector came from media professionals across Asia, who were consulted by the foundation last year about how best to bring back rice to where it belongs – at the heart of Asian family life. "It never occurred to us until they told us that rice is culture and art," says Javier.

The campaign in the Philippines began with a symposium last month, where cultural artists and experts shared their views on how rice "threads with the muses".

It will give way to a year-long multi-art, multimedia exhibits featuring music, visual arts, dance, theatre, literature, architecture and cinema showcasing how rice has been, in the words of anthropologist and professor Florentino Hornedo, "woven into the warp and woof of our social fabric”.

Hornedo, a professor at the Ateneo de Manila University, said his family’s life revolved around rice even if his native province of Batanes in the north is not rice basket. "Rice was not only food. Rice was medicine (soaked in vinegar, ground and applied on affected areas). A stalk of rice was a musical instrument. Harvesting rice was a socialising, cooperative event," he recalls.

The relationships between rice and humans, however, are "much more complex," among indigenous communities in the Cordillera region in the north, Hornedo says. "There, rice is integral to religion. Rice is a gift of the gods and so every planting required a ritual" paying homage to their god, ‘Kabunian’.

The tribes, including the Ifugaos who built the rice terraces, and the Igorots, also have ‘Bulol’, the god that guards the rice fields and granaries.

The rice terraces, says Horneda, prove the central role that rice plays in the Cordillera way of life. "It’s the great outdoor temple. The sacred space."

Rice is also central to other indigenous communities across the Philippines. But the U.S. occupation at the turn of the 20th century "caused a systematic change in the Filipino’s attitude towards rice," explains Hornedo. He cites the well-known song, ‘Magtanim ay Di Biro’ (‘Planting Rice is Never Fun’)" as one "that warned many not to become farmers".

The song, taught in U.S.-run schools in the country at the time, was "not without good intention as it teaches one to appreciate the labour of farmers," adds Hornedo. "But it was hardly inspiring for the young to sing it every day."

F Sionil Jose, a national artist for literature, speaks of rice as the country’s "shaper of destiny". Jose, whose major works have centred on class struggle in rural Philippines, stressed that rice cannot be isolated "from the much larger and more crucial issue which is the land issue."

Jose says the country’s past and future have been shaped largely by the struggle for rice and land. Filipino peasants have led rebellions from the Spanish and U.S. colonial rule up to the present, he recalls.

"Agrarian reform continues to be our constant need for as long as rural poverty exists and we do not produce enough rice – we import it by the millions (of tonnes)," says Jose. "We can export rice – if we really tried."

The primary objective of agrarian reform should, however, be "productivity and social justice – inseparable and constant," Jose stresses. Rice should be discussed, he says, in the context of "poverty and our oppressive and irresponsible elite”.

Studies have shown that nearly 60 percent of the 32 million poor Filipinos are in the rural areas, many of them landless farmers and workers.

Writers, the 78-year-old Jose believes, must take this reality into account. ”Literature which does not recognise or admit to the grievous injustices in this country is un-Filipino at he least, inane and degenerate at the worst,” he adds.

Like Jose, Hornedo and other artists lament how rice has largely been "depersonalised," "desecrated," and "devalued" in Philippine life because of many factors including freer trade and globalisation.

Even the use of pesticides, they say, has not only harmed the environment but eroded culture. "In the past rice was planted with care. In some cultures rice was not planted on a Friday or when the moon is on the wane. There was a whole ritual behind it. It was part of the life cycle. Today, it is merely a plant," Hornedo points out.

For consumers today, rice is merely a commodity. "Some no longer look at rice as sustaining, but as carbohydrates associated with negativity,” he adds.

Rice has also began to lose its role with the success of the fast food business. Says Hornedo: "Rice has been reduced to an object. It has lost its mythical value. Now we think of it in terms of kilogrammes.”