Skip to main content

The Irony of Getting Mad at Agricultural Imports Then Complaining About Inflation of Agricultural Goods


I really must laugh at the stupidity of "thought leader" pages or the comments on Facebook. A good example is the one above where Rosendo So says that onion importation could've prevented the price surge of onions. However, just reading the comments (and there's so plenty I wouldn't bother replying to them all) keep demanding protectionism for local farmers. The illogical stupidity of the comments proves one thing--there's still a significant surge of economic illiteracy in the Philippines. What do you expect from people who demand stuff like higher wages while lowering the prices of goods? Simple cost accounting dictates that wages are part of the production process. If you start raising up prices then you can expect the prices of goods to increase as well. They even don't bother to analyze the supply chain along with operational costs as well.

I don't need a doctorate in economics to get it. Okay, I'll confess that I had a graduate degree from the School of Business and Economics (SBE) from the University of San Carlos (USC). I had three units of economics during my Associate in Computer Science (ACS) days. I had a total of six units of economics during my Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) days. I had three more units during my Masters in Business Administration (MBA) days. Still, it's taught in basic economics that the law of supply and demand dictates it. If supply is low and demand is high then prices must go up. If supply is high and demand is low then prices must go low. It's all about regulating the free market. Also, if businessmen sell low during the high demand and low supply scenario--that would mean they'll have t close down sooner or later.

It's true that the Philippines is an agricultural country. However, if a country must export then it must also import. There are planting seasons and harvesting seasons. If it's not harvesting season then you can't force local Filipino farmers to speed up the process. Much care must be done by Filipino farmers to make sure their plants grow well. The obvious solution is to import. Somebody can argue Singapore must rely on imports because of its lack of natural resources. However, times of scarcity will hit. One country may have an excess while another has a scarcity. That's why it's important to have imports during scarcity and exports during excess.

I was reminded of times of drought. Back then, I had no idea why rice merchants had to sell imported food. Wouldn't that be detrimental to the local farmers? However, if rice merchants didn't buy imported rice (such as from Thailand and Vietnam) then they'd be focused on selling local rice at a very high price. Nobody would want to buy expensive local rice. Instead, people would opt to eat cheaper imported rice. The same goes for onions and other spices. If local Filipino merchants imported spices then they'd have something to sell. If there was an import of agricultural products then Filipino businesses can benefit. They will have more affordable items to sell or make their products with. A dessert maker could still produce rice cakes even if the rice was from Thailand or Vietnam. A bakery can still benefit from imported flour to make Filipino bread. 

An article I wrote was about if Filipino businessmen used imported equipment and materials (read here). It's because when I look at many booming local Filipino businesses--they're obviously using imported equipment. Don't tell me that Jollibee prospered without using imported stuff? Don't tell me local groceries can go on without selling imported stuff? So what if Filipinos actually used imported onions and garlic to cook a Filipino dish? Does that make the dish less Filipino? It wouldn't and I could care less if the stove wasn't made in the Philippines. What's important is that the Filipino dish was made with quality ingredients and equipment. There will be a mixture of local and imported. One could be cooking delicious pochero (Filipino beef stew) with beef imported from New Zealand, tomatoes from local farmers, ginger from Bicol, onions from Vietnam, and on a stove made in Japan. It's still delicious pochero nonetheless! It's still a Filipino dish and the imported ingredients didn't make it "less Filipino". 

The issue with imports is basically this. Filipino farmers need time to raise and grow their crops during planting season. Importing agricultural products isn't a threat to local industries. It's more about introducing competition plus balancing supply and demand. If there's a scarcity of local agricultural goods then importing is necessary. If there's an excess then exporting is the solution. The Philippines needs to stop babying its industries. Instead, let them grow with competition. 

As Deng Xiaoping would say, "It's not the issue of the cat being black or white. What I care about is the cat catches mice." Mao Zedong restricted a lot of imports and tried to create a protectionst utopia. I bet nobody abroad bought his inferior rice. The self-industrialization policy failed. As the late great Lee Kuan Yew said, "Let's stop trying to do everything ourselves." This is why I support removal of unnecessary tariffs. The only taxes I believe that foreign investors need to pay are income taxes. Let's stop crying, "Filipino First!" all the while it's done on American-made social media like Facebook or Twitter. 

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The Great Reversal: Democratic Philippines Became MORE Dependent on COMMUNIST Vietnam for Rice

Bao Thanh Nien On January 24, 2026, I read from the Philippine Star Facebook page  that a vendor from Baseco, Tondo, is selling Vietnamese rice at PHP 20.00 per kilo. Honestly, it made me laugh over President Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos Jr.'s promise. Was this rice from Vietnam a rice surplus if it wasn't premium rice? My experience with rice selling was with wholesale,  and it was a very different time. What I learned in the late 2000s to 2012 may no longer be applicable today.  Taking a look back at the history of Vietnam and the Philippines before Doi Moi This time, I decided to go with history because a certain someone on Facebook (as always, I will not mention names as much as possible) has actually called it that the Philippines' dependency on Vietnam for rice, despite the International Rice Research Institute being actually located in Pili Drive, Los Baños, Laguna 4031, Philippines. This guy (whom I nickname Porky due to his obesity) I just mentioned, sp...
Read more

Teaching Mandarin by Recalling How Much Chinoy School Students Complained, "Hay, Chinese!"

It's time for a bit of Chinese language Throwback Thursday. I remember how the Chinese school can be summarized as students  memorizing without understanding . The problem wasn't the Lǎoshīs (老師) but the system that ran them as persons . I decided to write this article to " bring up a trauma " associated with the Chinese education system. From Kiko Chinese, this picture shows the common complaints from children. Standard Chinese is so hard! The Chinese schools tend to lose students because they keep failing in Grade 2 or Grade 2 in Chinese. In fact, I remember someone failing Chinese four times back in the 1990s. Another one was three years in Grade 3 Chinese, where the Chinese teacher was even stricter than the Grade 2 Chinese teacher. The real issue was that there wasn't any real learning because the old traditional Chinese system wasn't doing anything right . People were treated as if Hokkien were their first language. However, we realize that people can...
Read more

Real Talk: No MNCs In Their Right Mind, Would Ever AGREE to That Ridiculous 60-40 Proposal

Here's another art I found on Facebook. Some time ago, I wrote about how the 60-40 policy may not prohibit, while still discouraging FDIs from entering . It's plain common sense, really, that nobody would want to rent a space if they had to part with 60% of their net profits to the lessor (read here ).  It annoys me to think that certain Netizens on Facebook are still blaming government corruption over the 60-40 policy. That can get annoying. I can link the 60-40 policy to government corruption . After all, corrupt officials want to perpetuate their stay in power through an ignorant and impoverished population. However, blaming corruption alone is really downright stupid. Some say investors are going to Communist Vietnam because the Communist Party of Vietnam-Vietnam People's Army is serious about cracking corruption. However, the reality is that, ironically, Communist Vietnam has more reasonable economic restrictions compared to the Philippines (read here ). Only a few sec...
Read more

Kabataan Partylist Seriously Needs to Learn ECONOMICS from the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union

Vietnam National University, Hanoi Kabataan Partylist, is that you? No, it's actually the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union (Đoàn Thanh niên Cộng sản Hồ Chí Minh), or alternatively, it can be called the Vietnam Youth Union . The color blue may remind some of Kabataan Partylist. Both Kabataan Partylist and the Vietnam Youth Union are involved with recruiting youths into the organization. However, there's a crucial difference between Kabataan Partylist and the Youth Union in how they view economics. The  Kabataan Partylist Laguna's blog  even writes this: It believes that the Philippines, as a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, is plagued by a system which allows foreign and big business interests to dominate, while the majority of our countrymen are left poor and hungry . We are living in a society where foreign subservience, peasant landlessness, and rampant corruption are the top three ills. To that end, Kabataan Party-list strives to galvanize the Filipino youth in u...
Read more

Indonesia's Masarang Foundation Proves that FDI Can Greatly Help Local Philippine Agriculture

As I've sipped two glasses of Tealive's Aren Caramel (read here )--I was tempted to research more on palm sugar from the Arenga tree. Arenga bears the fruit that Filipinos call kaong and Indonesians call kolang kaling. As a Filipino, I prefer to call it the Kaong Tree or Punuan ng Kaong. This video is from Masarang, Indonesia. Masarang in Tagalog means strong. If the Indonesian word means strong as well--this is a very strong foundation. The research on palm sugar landed me in the organization called Yayasan Masarang or Masarang Foundation. The video I just shared shows the struggle of palm tappers and how FDI can help in learning environmentally-friendly practices.  The late Lee Kuan Yew even published in his book From Third World to First about greening Singapore. The pernicious myth that's spread around is that Singapore supposedly only opened to FDI due to lack of natural resources . However, other countries rich in natural resources like Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Chi...
Read more