It's the food, stupid

 when Clinton ran for president, his slogan was: It's the economy stupid.

Right now, the Philippines is getting back to normalcy: but are our OFW getting their jobs back?

And what about local investment? BBMarcos is busy trying to make ties to nearby countries such as Singapore, Korea, Indonesia... and where does China vs the US investments come into this? I'm not sure: I'm sure the human rights types who look the other way when China puts a million Uighars into reeducation camps will hyperventillate if Marcos arrests a few human rights types who actually are helping local terror groups under the thesis that these mlitants love poor people (I saw this in Africa, so it's not a Philippine problem).

But anyway, right now there are shortages of salt and sugar. And things might be worse because we import a lot of food.

I am not an expert in the economy, but we do grow organic rice and are in the early rice crop season, and the price of  fertilizer including organic fertilizer, and pesticies has gone way up.,,,,,, 

to make things worse, the businesslady who bought last year's crop has not paid for it yet. 

Luckily we have some savings to keep the farm running, but one wonders how many farmers will go bankrupt, caught in the trap of increased prices to grow food and investors who cheat to increase prices of food and encourage importation of food instead of investing in local farmers.

will this result in large agribusinesses buying up land from these bankrupt (and often aging) farmers, and the end result being more efficent agriculture? 

On the other hand, there is a limit to how much land any person can own (which is why we subcontract a lot of our crops). And there is a ban on outsiders owning local real estate and businesses (although traditionally this is worked around by outsiders marrying a local gal and putting the land/business in her name).

So will our area, which grows a lot of the rice and veggies for Manila, be essentially lost to development?

Maybe... but Kuya notes that with the local roads being improved that investors are buying up rice fields near these roads for development (country houses, resorts, factories, etc).

and the big problem right now is the shortage of fertilizer and the increase in the price of diesel/LPG...part of this a world wide problem due to the shortage of natural gas because of Russia but also because of green policies (Biden's policies changed America from an exporter to an importer of fossil fuels).

But never mind.

Corruption is a big problem, and one that the churches should be paying attention to  instead of having the Pope push love of mother earth and the Catholic bishops here in the Philippines opposing investment in fossil fuels that would keep local prices down and help the poor...(one bishop actually dared to whisper that they needed to pay more attention to the plight of the poor, but one doesn't know if he means doing something practical to improve the economy and get jobs for the poor, or just getting a photo op to show they love the poor).

a lot of this is complicated, and here is a discussion of the problem that brings up a lot of these issues.

,,,,,