The Department of Agriculture (DA) has so mastered the art of Orwellian doublespeak that it can quietly but recklessly approve jumbo importations designed to flood the market with imported rice, then highlight through its non-stop propaganda machine a supposed enhanced rice production program as a real, serious and well-funded undertaking to cut back on rice imports and empower the small rice farmers. The real, and the only, rice supply strategy is nonstop importation, but a public declaration — which makes DA head William Dar a VSP or a very serious person in the eyes of gullible pundits — that a supposed inspired rice production program so imports can be cut back and domestic rice production takes primacy.

From January to September, according to records compiled by peasant groups, the DA, through the Bureau of Plant Industry, issued import permits called Sanitary and Phytosanitary Import Clearances for 3.75 million metric tons of rice, which topped the 3 million MT imported last year.