rice crisis essay

The rice tariffication law and its role in the current rice crisis

In 2018, the country underwent a rice crisis.  By October, retail prices of well-milled rice (WMR) reached almost Php 50 per kilo, up 14% over prices in the previous year.  Prices for regular-milled rice (RMR) rose by 16%.  This coincided with the depletion of National Food Authority (NFA) stocks, delays in import arrivals, and a dip in local production.  It was only when then President Rodrigo Duterte ordered NFA to immediately import and allow private traders to bring in rice did rice prices stabilize.

The current situation is eerily similar.  NFA stocks are down to just one day’s national consumption.  Entering the 3-month lean period in July 2023, over-all inventories (held by farm households, private traders and NFA) sufficed for only about 60 days.  Rice from abroad was supposed to cover the 30-day gap, but the war in Ukraine, climatic disturbances and the Indian export ban rendered rice importation expensive and risky.  As stocks began thinning out in August and September, prices ascended to levels beyond those in 2018.

The 2018 rice crisis triggered the rapid passage of the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) in February 2019.  Blaming government import controls, RTL’s proponents argued that the private sector could manage the rice market more efficiently.  As a result, NFA’s importation, regulatory and price stabilization functions were abolished. The agency was relegated to buffer stocking for calamities.  The private sector was given free and unlimited rein over rice importations.

 Imports immediately surged to 3.17 million tons in 2019, from previous annual levels of 2 million tons or less. In 2022, they registered an all-time high of 3.85 million tons. These voluminous inflows, especially during local harvests, led to severe drops in palay prices.  Between 2019 and 2021, farmers’ incomes declined by Php 4,500 per hectare per season, compared to normal pre-RTL figures.

Low farmgate prices disincentivized farmers; more so, when fertilizer and fuel costs rose starting in 2021.  While improving slightly, total rice output did not keep pace with growth in population and demand.  Our self-sufficiency ratio, or the percentage of total food and other requirements produced by our farmers, decreased from 90% prior to RTL to 79% in 2021.  We became increasingly dependent on foreign suppliers.  Rice imports accounted for an average of 19% of our total annual supply during the RTL period, compared to only 14% before that.

Meanwhile, RTL’s promised benefits to consumers in terms of lower rice prices did not materialize.  Studies by the Federation of Free Farmers show that net savings to consumers in the first three years of RTL amounted to a measly ₱52 per person per year.  Importers and traders pocketed the gains from cheaper imports, even as many undervalued their shipments to reduce their tariff obligations.  Many now call the RTL as the “Rice Traders Liberalization Law”.

The country’s growing reliance on imports, coupled with our farmers’ diminished capacity to satisfy our rice requirements, are the proximate causes of the current crisis (extremely tight supplies and prohibitive prices of rice).  While the proponents of RTL may not have intended this to happen, they bear responsibility for hastily pushing for its enactment and for peddling their faulty theories and bloated projections about the virtues of full-scale liberalization and deregulation of our rice markets.

According to the Department of Agriculture (DA), as of August 1 this year, the country’s rice stocks had fallen to 39 days level of consumption.  This meant that rice good for an additional 21 days of consumption – about 750,000 metric tons – needed to be sourced either from imports or early palay harvests (before the main harvests could start replenishing inventories from late September onwards). 

Unfortunately, imports did not come in as expected.  As international prices increased, foreign suppliers started reneging on contracts.  Local importers themselves scaled down their imports; a few reportedly cancelled their orders.  The raiding and padlocking of warehouses of supposed hoarders, and the subsequent imposition of price ceilings on major rice grades, aggravated the problem and caused importers to adopt a wait-and-see stance.

Throughout all this, government was left almost powerless to control events. It could have stepped in early to augment supplies once it detected traders’ reluctance to import.  However, RTL specifically prohibited NFA from importing.  RTL’s implementing rules do allow the Philippine International Trade Corporation to undertake importation “ only in the event of (a) rice supply shortage ”. However, the DA repeatedly claimed that there was no rice shortage.

RTL also severely curtailed government’s ability to monitor the rice industry.  It removed NFA’s powers to license market players, inspect warehouses, and track stock movements. 

This led to essentially fishing expeditions by law enforcers and some legislators to apprehend alleged hoarders, and the recent imposition of price ceilings to ferret out unidentified profiteers!  The price caps eventually led retailers to lose money, government to spend money to compensate the retailers, and farmers to suffer from drops in palay prices, with no hoarder or profiteerer being apprehended so far.

The same economic agencies and interests that advocated RTL’s passage are now recommending tariff cuts on rice imports from 35% to 10%, ostensibly to bring down rice prices and control inflation.  True to form, they again look abroad to salvage the situation – which their pro-importation policy bias created in the first place. 

A tariff reduction will only further discourage our farmers from redoubling their productive efforts.  It will. make our food security even more dependent on external players and factors.  Nor is there any guarantee that importers and traders will pass on any tariff savings to consumers.

Before humoring these economic theorists and interests again, let us hold them to account for the harm that their wrong prescriptions have inflicted on millions of our small farmers and poor consumers.  Let us not allow them to repeat the same mistakes and force others to pay for them.

If El Nino persists until next year, and international prices remain high, we could end up in an even worse predicament, come the lean months of 2024. 

There is still some time to prepare for this contingency.  We should provide our farmers with the right price incentive in the coming harvest season, so that they will scale up production during the next production cycle.  We should put in place the necessary post-harvest facilities to reduce losses and enhance the quality and market value of their produce.  We can give farmers the option to store their harvests in idle NFA warehouses, borrow money against their deposits, and then sell them in the open market when commodity prices improve.  And we can set up systems that will enable farmers and their organizations to sell their products directly to consumers – with government, together with the private sector, providing logistical support. 

Most important, we should renew trust and confidence in our own farmers, and exorcise the myth that open markets are the best guarantee for our food security.

Raul Montemayor is the national manager of the Federation of Free Farmers.

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Home ⇛ luz y saber ⇛ vol. 2 no. 1 (2008), the rice crisis in the philippines.

Jomar H. Mendoza

Discipline: Agriculture

The Philippines is experiencing an unusual problem – high price of rice. Unusual because the Philippines is an agricultural country endowed with plenty of natural resources, yet it is now the world’s largest importer of rice. What happened? Why are we experiencing this problem? Will rice depart from Filipino tables?

The world still grows plenty of rice but the crisis is caused by several factors. In the Philippines, the government assures that there is enough supply for every Filipino. This, of course, is in the form of imported rice as rice production in the country is not enough to feed the entire population.

The Philippines has been importing rice since the Spanish period. This continued through the American regime, and still continues until today. The long queues of people buying rice are not new. The same scenario happened in the 1930s, 1970s and in the middle of 1990s brought about by weather disaster, mismanagement and corruption. At present, the crisis is also brought about by abandonment, conversion and reclassification of lands. Whatever the reasons for such, one thing is certain – the use of land for rice is diminishing.

Several measures are being undertaken by the government to solve the alarming crisis. However, real, thorough and long-lasting solutions must be the goal, not just the government, but for all Filipinos to solve this crisis. The goal should not just be half cup of rice; it should be rice on every Filipino table.

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Combating the rice crisis

Another rice crisis recently emerged as the cost of rice soared due to various reasons. This problem is underscored by a troubling statistic—in September, the cost of rice increased by 17.9 percent, reaching its highest point in 14 years, contributing 2.8 percent to the whole inflation rate for that month. This increase put significant financial pressure on Filipino families’ budgets, 13.1 percent of which accounts for rice, and more difficult for poor households who spend up to 30 percent of their income on rice.

The nature and causes of the current rice crisis are multifaceted, with several key factors at play. Extreme weather conditions, including typhoons and droughts, have affected local rice production, leading to lower yields and reduced supply. Concurrently, distribution gaps disrupted the market availability of rice. This issue was further worsened by high transport costs, primarily driven by the soaring fuel prices resulting from the Ukraine war and the decision of large oil producers to reduce oil output. Additionally, fluctuating international rice prices have had a ripple effect, influencing local prices.

To help stabilize rice prices, we propose the following short- and long-term recommendations for the executive and legislative branches:

Executive. 1. Encourage greater private sector participation in the rice supply chain, particularly conglomerates who can help enhance the efficiency of the rice distribution system essential to fight disruptions that drive up rice prices. These corporations can invest in improving storage facilities, strengthening transportation infrastructure, and establishing direct marketing channels in collaboration with farmers.

2. Closer collaboration between government agencies. For instance, the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the National Food Authority can work together to develop a rice procurement and distribution plan, specifically made for this current crisis, that ensures that farmers get a fair price for their produce and that consumers can buy affordable rice. The DA and the Department of Trade and Industry can also develop a rice market development plan that connects farmers with buyers.

3. Develop more agriculturists, particularly focusing on their role in helping farmers enhance productivity at the farm level which can then help cut rice prices and ensure affordability. Traditional farmers’ hesitance to adopt new agricultural technologies, including fertilizers and hybrid rice varieties, has contributed to the rice crisis.

4. At the local government level, promote a cofinancing mechanism that incentivizes local government units (LGUs) to provide more funding to rice programs. Under cofinancing, each peso an LGU invests in irrigation, post-harvest facilities, or other programs to support rice farmers will receive two to three times more matching fund from the national government.

5. Continue implementing the rice tariffication law (RTL), which was created to combat the rice crisis a few years ago. RTL facilitates the importation of rice, helping offset domestic shortages, and stabilize prices. Moreover, encouraging active participation of the private sector in rice trading promotes market competition and discourages price manipulation.

6. The President should convene and preside over the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council, at least monthly, to closely monitor the progress of important bills and effectively address the top concerns of Filipinos such as this rice crisis.

Legislative. 1. Reconsider the proposal to lower the tariff rate on rice from 35 percent to 10 percent. We advocate for a dynamic approach that adjusts tariffs based on international rice market conditions. When global rice prices decline, lowering tariffs can stimulate economic growth and ease consumer burdens. However, it is crucial to recognize the inherent volatility of international rice prices. If prices trend upward again, we must be prepared to reinstate higher tariffs to protect domestic farmers.

2. Amend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law. This can promote efficient land use, increased productivity through modernized farming practices, crop diversification, economies of scale through consolidated farms, improved rural infrastructure, better access to credit, market regulation, and comprehensive support for smallholder farmers.

3. Amend the warehouse receipts law. While this applies to all crops, enhancing the efficiency and transparency of warehouses can reduce post-harvest losses and ensure that crops such as rice stocks are stored under optimal conditions.

4. Involve pertinent oversight committees in both the House and Senate. Their oversight and scrutiny will provide an additional layer of accountability, helping to maintain transparency in implementing these measures.

Taking these decisive actions to mitigate the rice crisis is of paramount importance to ensure a sufficient rice supply, proper and efficient rice distribution, stabilize rice prices, manage inflation, and alleviate poverty in the Philippines. When executed in a timely manner, these recommendations will address the current challenges effectively and help avert another rice nightmare in the future.

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Gary B. Teves served as finance secretary under the Arroyo administration.

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[ANALYSIS] Yet another massive rice crisis

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This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

David Castuciano/Rappler

Again and again and again. The crisis is as certain as it has begun. And it is well on its way to becoming another massive, expensive, and panic-ridden recurring nightmare. It is as certain as was the imprimatur on the notorious Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) and the futility of overwhelming reason arrayed against it. Never mind the eventual ravaging of the economy. And never mind that the MIF seeding robs the Land Bank of the Philippines and the Development Bank of the Philippines substantial capital needed by the agricultural sector.

The crisis worsens this August. For an impotent if not derelict Department of Agriculture (DA), it is a testament to the truism of insanity’s definition. Indeed Einstein’s parable of quantum insanity curses us where our highest officials constantly repeat the same palliatives applied to food shortages, each time expecting different outcomes. Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat .

Given the 2022 electoral mandate that allowed these politicians the power to toy with our lives, perhaps the Filipino is just as demented. We permitted the resurrection of the evil we once encountered half a century ago.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr. debuted at the DA with a series of reckless and ridiculous importations, from sugar and rice, to onions, garlic, and even salt. The 2022 rice crisis he oversaw but failed to solve is now history. That it threatens again is a farce.

A few weeks ago we applauded the balanced fertilizer strategy (BFS) that would have effectively reduced input costs, thus spurring local rice productivity. We spoke too soon.

Policies favoring blind importations rather than local production distracts from the long-term benefits of protecting soil fertility and productivity.

Discern its immediate effects and count the losses. Unbridled importations had led to a virtual defunding and the recall of the budget for a draught-resistant biofertilizer program – one of the few positive aspects Marcos brought to the DA. We should have realized early on that lip-service is integral to governance-by-spin. Never mind that critical funds had already been expensed for as much as 889,000 hectares, the purchased bags now wasting away in storage. These would have increased palay production by 1.2 million metric tons and earned P24 billion in incremental profit.

[ANALYSIS] Saving the soil: Marcos gets it right at the DA

As a quick and easy palliative to domestic shortages that aggravate headline inflation, debunking lies at the recent State of the Nation Address that he had proven he can bring down food prices, the default importations Marcos relies on worsen systemic curses inflicted on the  sector he personally oversees.

It does not take a rocket scientist to see the weaknesses that result in comparatively more rationale margins earned by rice exporting economies that mechanize, provide better access to funding, and operate farmer-centric equitable supply chains. Marcos’s default importations that favor cartels create wealth for exporting foreign economies. By favoring foreign farmers at the expense of ours, he virtually catalyzes the crash of domestic food security.  

The crash would have been mitigated had the importations been to increase rice buffer stocks. In 2022, in the wake of a precedent rice crisis, those buffers were set at a minimum of 90 days. Currently the DA has declared that it has slightly a third of that, roughly a month and a week if they are to be believed.

Unfortunately, not everyone at the DA or its attached agencies like the National Food Authority (NFA) agrees. Employing five prospective scenarios using risk and sensitivity analysis models, each with importations, we are likely to have depleted less-than-zero rice stocks under three scenarios while two result in either 48.1 days or 6.8 days. Where rice buffers are concerned, the NFA has the data. But not everyone listens. It is ironic as Marcos, armed with presidential powers, presides over an internally dysfunctional agency.

Focus on the DA’s internal discord under Marcos. Note the constant Whack-a-Mole controversies within its bungling bureaucracy. Among the DA’s internal dynamics, factionalism has worsened as warring interests plot and exert control on weak or non-existent leadership. Grabbing the presidential ear is now part of the one-upmanship game they play. Unfortunately, too many tongues wag while too few medulla oblongata cells work, thus validating Einstein’s parable.

While presidential whispers say there was a bumper crop and current buffers are adequate, ground-level reality differs. Note discrepancies.

Net rice exporter India accounts for over 40% of global rice exports. China and the Philippines are among the largest net importers. The recent Indian rice export ban has created global shortages and astronomical import prices that compel private importers to rethink their strategies. June and July data validate this while August will see our buffers scraping the bottom.

In Mindanao, the largest rice mill located in South Cotabato was forced to source from as far away as Mindoro. Imagine incremental transport costs that bloat mill-gate prices. Unable to source from Bukidnon, Northern Mindanao traders now rely on importations. Debunking government pronouncements, our largest rice-miller groups from Isabela and Mindoro say their year-on-year stocks have fallen. That is effectively a decline from the Duterte administration to Marcos’s.

Our weaknesses result from resurgent corruption, cartelization, crony capitalism, leadership incompetence and a failure to unify constantly combatting bureaucrats – all of which have returned with a vengeance under the Marcos administration.

That said, let us turn to the numbers. The estimates of the current buffer stock according to the Food Balance Sheet show a massive depletion by this month. This invariably forces us to import, not to simply augment the buffer but to put food on the table.

Our neighbors are not as sluggish or internally fractured. Last March, Indonesia augmented its buffer stock by ordering two million metric tons of which 500,000 was for immediate delivery. When the latter amount could not be filled by Thailand and Vietnam, both relatively high priced major rice exporting economies, Indonesia quickly negotiated one million metric tons from India.

India however denies it agreed to export. It cited a non-export policy given its current concerns on its late monsoon effects. Add its 7% productivity funding subsidies and an incremental 20% export tax where it actively commits  to assist its own rice farmers. Worsening matters, Vietnam, which accounts for over 90% of our rice imports, has recently increased its prices by 20%.

Those factors are behind the global rice shortage, and the astronomical prices certain to impact negatively on our importations as our rice buffers hit bottom within weeks, thus leading to yet another rice crisis. – Rappler.com

Dean de la Paz is a former investment banker and managing director of a New Jersey-based power company operating in the Philippines. He is the chairman of the board of a renewable energy company and is a retired Business Policy, Finance, and Mathematics professor. He collects Godzilla figures and antique tin robots.

Please abide by Rappler's commenting guidelines .

Thanks to writer Dean De La Paz for his foresight about “another massive rice crises.” Unfortunately, he just focused on “foreign farmers” as future beneficiaries of such crises. He must have forgotten that Foreign Traders will get more economic benefits that their farmer counterpart. But at the top of the prospective beneficiaries of any agricultural product importation are our own Local Traders. More likely, these Local Traders have connections in the Office of the President (especially since our President is the concurrent DA secretary), and, more likely, they were contributors or donors to our President’s 2022 Election Campaign Fund.

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International Edition

The 2007/2008 rice crisis in the Philippines

Essay, 2012, 30 pages, grade: a, marcel reymond (author).

“No child will go to bed hungry within ten years” Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State First World Food Conference in 1974

1) Introduction

This stud’s aim is to explain why in 2008, there were food related protests in the Philippines. The events have been analyzed using two frameworks. One examined the four dimensions of the food security concept as presented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to understand the dynamic of the rice market; The other expounded the legitimacy of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’ s government, probing at the Philippines’ s level of democratization through an approach of historical institutionalism.

The staple crop in the Philippines is rice. Through available data we investigate well milled rice (WMR). When those facts are unobtainable we will resort to any rice information. If food prices in general started to increase from 2006, rice markets were slow off the mark. WMR wholesale prices in the Philippines shot up in mid-2007 and reached their peak in 2008. The food unrest critical period occurred between March 2008 and August 2008 when prices escalated Other points deemed important will be raised even if they happened outside of this time frame.

1.1 Food security aspects

The rice crisis in the Philippines was closely linked to the global food crisis and encompassed other commodities. It started as early as 2006 with the increased cost of corn, wheat and soya beans followed by the escalating cost of rice. They were spurred on by:

- depletion of grain stocks worldwide (increased consumption, reduction of stock and slower yield growth) - rising income in Asia and change in consumption patterns - conversion of commodities into biofuels (new policies in the US, EU and Brazil. Biofuels now account for only 1.5% of the global liquid fuels supply but for almost half the increase in the consumption for major food crops back in 2006/7) - dire weather conditions in several important growing areas (Australia, Russia and Ukraine, Northern Europe, Canada, Southeast Europe, Turkey, Northwest Africa and Argentina) in 2006/7 depleted the world cereal production by 2.1 per cent - depreciation of the dollar since - speculation and shift of equities and real estate into commodities to diversify financial portfolios - depreciated US dollar led to higher fuel prices and input costs for agriculture (fertilizer and transport costs) - long term low rice prices, lessened incentives for private and public investors’ resources in the sector

The different commodity markets exposed to various individual shocks and particular conditions, caused a general food price increase for the consumers. It heightened the plight of the poor who were already struggling to enjoy a decent diet. Governments, in response to public protests and unrests tried to increase food supplies in their domestic markets. Two of the actions, taken in the second semester of 2007 proved fatal: minimization of exports (export-ban, minimum price, taxes etc.) and vast increase of imports (reduction in trade barriers, stock building). In July 2008 at the height of the price crisis in the Philippines, thirty one countries according the World Bank had restricted or suspended their exports. The stepped up demand mixed with a depleted supply rocketed further the prices (Childs et al. 2009 and Evans, 2009).

The International rice market features a number of important specificities. The food crisis, occurred when the rice harvest was at its highest on record (2007/8) and global ending stocks were increasing. Roughly half the world’s population relies on rice to survive. South Asian consumers’ diet alters between rice- and wheat-based products, according to market price. This does not occur in other parts of Asia (Childs et al., 2009). The export market has been dominated by a small number of players for several years (in 2008, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, India and the US were the top 5 exporters, accounting for almost 80 per cent of the world export volume) (USDA). The market structure could be defined as an oligopoly. Rice trade was initially relatively marginal as most of the production was consumed domestically. It has remained smaller than the intense wheat market. The trade-to-production ratio has reached 7 percent. Asian countries have traditionally been the most significant rice importers. This pattern is slowly shifting (Shigetomi et al., 2011).

The Philippines’ rice production sector faced its own short and long-term challenges. During the Green Revolution, the Philippines could increase its productivity but only slowly expand it in recent years. High population growth and low productivity led to increased imports in rice. The Philippines’ investment in agricultural research and related activities (support service, infrastructure etc.) was much less significant than their neighbors’. The Department of Agriculture’s technical capacities could hardly support the local government. Overall, there was a weak governance in the provision of agricultural support services. High unemployment rates did not allow for work opportunities outside of the farm sector. Growers turned to expanding farming to more marginal land, further reducing the productivity rate and worsening the degradation of natural resources. Inadequate government policies aiming at keeping rice prices high for farmers and low for consumers, through subsidized distribution via National Food Authority (NFA) proved exorbitant. The total effective costs of the NFA rice subsidy program were estimated at 19 Billion Philippine Peso (PhP) (400 Million US$) in 2007 and 69 PhP Billion (1.5 Billion US$) in 2008. The land reform only inched forward. Farmers’ shaky property rights limited the access to credits. Small holders had to contend with informal credit markets and their high interests as snubbed by commercial banks.

1.2 Legitimacy aspects

Might the demonstrations be linked to other factors than those of food (in)security and reflect a legitimacy crisis in the government? Accepting that a democratic system was the most legitimate form of government, this paper has evaluated selected dimensions of democratization in the Philippines to present a more complete picture of the situation.

2) Material and methods

2.1 food (in)security.

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Figure 1: Food security operationalized base on the four FAO main dimensions

Source: Dr. Andrea Markos, Webster University

The Philippines’s rice crisis has been analyzed according to the four main dimensions elaborated during the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome. Delegates agreed on the following food security definition:

“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (World Food Summit, 1996).

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Table 1: Four main dimensions of food security defined by FAO

Source: FAO introduction to the basic concept of food security.

In this study no distinction has been marked between “food security” and “nutrition security”. The nutritional aspect has been approached through the chronic undernourishment indicator.

2.2 Democratization

Figure 2: Legitimacy of the government in the Philippines operationalized based on Historical-Institutionalism supported by categorization proposed by Regilme (2010).

Source: own creation

The second concept applied to fully comprehend the food demonstrations, is based on the “Historical-institutionalism” approach. It punctuates historically-based norms- and a value system which impacts on present institutions. The Philippines had been a Spanish colony during more than 330 years. The invaders’ hacienda system in which large family holdings were tilled by tenant farmers, ruled. It set an institutionalized divide between an elite and peasants, a partition which still prevails today in a patron-client structure. Colonialism has instated a top-down ruling by an alienated bureaucracy. It is not accountable to the masses and keeps a tight elite’s control over government policies. However attached to democratic values Nationals may be and despite formal democratic institutions, corruption enmeshes the country’s political culture. An oligarchy government lurking behind a Western-style liberal democracy controls the bureaucracy, political parties and elections, thanks to contacts within the security apparatus and their money. The state has evolved into an instrument serving the elites’ interests to the detriment of the public at large. Even though there are elections, politicians, once in power, only seek to recover the costs to enhance their patron-client system in order to stay in power by ensuring reelection (Caoili, 2005).

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THE WIDER IMAGE

Flood-battered farmers in southern brazil wade through lost harvests.

Joao Engelmann, a 54-year-old farmer, travels by boat during floods to feed his cows in Eldorado do Sul, Brazil, May 15, 2024. REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli

By Amanda Perobelli

Filed May 29, 2024, 1 p.m. GMT

Photography by Amanda Perobelli Reporting by Amanda Perobelli and Lisandra Paraguassu

Filed: May 29, 2024, 10 a.m. GMT

After three days of ferocious rains, Edite de Almeida and her husband fled their flooded home in early May and let loose their humble dairy herd on higher ground. Nearby, the waters rose above her head and within a day they were lapping at the roofs of houses.

Record-breaking floods in southern Brazil, the result of weather patterns intensified by climate change, have only started to recede after displacing half a million people in the state of Rio Grande do Sul and killing more than 160.

The full extent of the losses is still coming into focus, especially in rural areas where farmers like Almeida and her family produce much of Brazil’s rice, wheat and dairy.

Of her 60 egg-laying hens, just eight survived. Their cows have nowhere to graze in the flooded landscape.

“I’m not mourning. I’m grateful, because there are many who lost far more than us,” Almeida said. “I’m grateful we survived and I mourn for those who lost family.”

“Now the priority is to save the animals. The calves are still nursing,” she added.

Her husband Joao Engelmann has made a daily trek by foot, tractor and boat to bring the herd whatever food he can find. He returns sopping wet each night after wading with friends through their farms, helping to haul away perished livestock and tend to the survivors.

One neighbor found a dead hog in his bedroom. All around, fields of rice and vegetables have been washed away.

Theirs were among the nearly 6,500 family farms flooded by this month’s torrential downpours, according to analysis of satellite data by consultancy Terra Analytics.

The floods have rattled agricultural markets as they disrupted soy harvesting, washed out silos, snared farm exports and killed over 400,000 chickens. The government is lining up rice imports to blunt the impact on national inflation figures.

The washed out farms and roads around the state capital Porto Alegre have contributed to food and water shortages in the area, adding to the crisis disrupting the lives of more than 2 million people.

Parts of the state saw more than 700 mm (28 inches) of rain so far this month, national weather service INMET reported – more than London’s average rainfall in a year.

As the floodwaters began to retreat in recent weeks, Almeida got a first glimpse of her ravaged home, with the walls stained, appliances wrecked and belongings coated in mud.

“I can’t think about the future. That belongs to God,” Almeida said. “I don’t expect to have again what I had before. We’re starting over,” she added, grimacing through tears.

Starting over

Almeida and Engelmann know what it means to start from nothing.

They met in the 1980s at one of the first encampments of the Landless Workers’ Movement in central Rio Grande do Sul, where the movement - the largest of its kind in Latin America - got its start, occupying rural properties to demand land reform.

They married and had their first children in that camp, called Cruz Alta, before the state government gave them permission to settle in Eldorado do Sul, about 70 km (45 miles) west of the state capital Porto Alegre.

They are among 30 families in the settlement who produced enough rice, vegetables, milk, eggs and pork to make a living, build and furnish homes and send their children to university.

The floods have left all of that hanging in the balance.

Almeida, Engelmann and their daughter are sleeping on a truck bed in a neighbor’s warehouse, improvising a domestic routine as they put their lives back together.

“I’ve been through all this in the encampments - the challenges to cook, to sleep. I learned to live that way. But I didn’t think I’d be doing it again,” Almeida said.

One of her closest friends, Inacio Hoffmann, 60, was just four months into retirement when the floods tore through his farm, killing 13 of 22 dairy cows.

“It’s so bleak to haul off and bury these creatures that we took care of every day,” said Hoffmann. He is weighing whether to leave it all behind and try a new life elsewhere.

Almeida said her family is determined to stick it out.

“We’ve come from nothing. We’ve returned to nothing. Now we start again.”

The Wider Image

Photography: Amanda Perobelli

Reporting: Amanda Perobelli and Lisandra Paraguassu in Eldorado do Sul

Photo editing and design: Maye-E Wong and Eve Watling

Additional reporting: Ricardo Brito in Brasilia

Text editing: Brad Haynes and Alistair Bell

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As government leaders battle increasingly severe and complex disasters, multimodal AI emerges as a promising tool for effective, coordinated crisis response.

This essay is part of a continuing publication series for the Global Crisis & Resilience Forum led by Juliette Kayyem, Faculty Chair of the Belfer Center’s Homeland Security Program. The forum is supported by McKinsey & Company. The ideas in these essays are the independent products of the authors.

Imagine this future scenario: as a hurricane develops, both its intensity and the timing of landfall are recalculated every hour on desktop-grade computers. The nature of the impact, including noncorrelated crises that may occur and second-order effects of the hurricane, are modeled through multiple scenarios on city-scale digital twins that have property-level granularity. The output of these simulations results in a clear set of trigger-based action plans that are tailored, verified through human-in-the-loop mechanisms, and sent to emergency responders, community leaders, government agencies, and potentially even residents in affected areas. Community leaders have access to tools that allow them to understand what to expect, what resources to leverage, and what actions may make the most difference. Homeowners receive targeted suggestions of how to protect their assets, avoid falling victim to fraud, and navigate post-disaster support. Disinformation campaigns get countered by fact-based automated outreach.

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Deadly Floods in Brazil Were Worsened by Climate Change, Study Finds

The country’s south received three months’ rain in two weeks. Global warming has made such deluges twice as likely as before, scientists said.

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By Raymond Zhong and Manuela Andreoni

Human-caused warming has doubled the chances that southern Brazil will experience extreme, multiday downpours like the ones that recently caused disastrous flooding there, a team of scientists said on Monday. The deluges have killed at least 172 people and displaced more than half a million residents from their homes.

Three months’ rain fell in a two-week span of April and May in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. After analyzing weather records, the scientists estimated that the region had a 1 percent chance each year of receiving so much rain in so little time. In the cooler climate of the 19th century, before large-scale emissions of greenhouse gases, such colossal downpours were far rarer, the researchers said.

Brazil’s south is one of the country’s rainiest regions. As the world gets warmer, the areas of high atmospheric pressure that occasionally form over the Atlantic coast of South America are becoming larger and longer lasting. That pushes more warm, moist air toward the south, where it can fall as rain.

When the latest rains hit, Rio Grande do Sul was still recovering from floods that killed at least 54 people late last year . Three of the four largest floods ever recorded in the state’s capital, Porto Alegre, have now occurred in the past nine months, said Regina Rodrigues, a professor of physical oceanography at the Federal University of Santa Catarina and one of the scientists who worked on the new analysis.

“While significant floods have occurred in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in the past, they are becoming increasingly strong and widespread,” Dr. Rodrigues said at a news conference.

The report was produced by World Weather Attribution, an international scientific collaboration that examines the influence of human-induced climate change on extreme weather. The analysis of the floods in Brazil has not undergone academic peer review, though it relies on widely accepted methods.

To conduct their analysis, the researchers looked at historical records of four-day and 10-day rainfall events in Rio Grande do Sul. They used models of the global climate to estimate how the probability of rain levels as high as the ones experienced this year had changed over the past two centuries as human-induced warming took place.

They estimated a significant increase in likelihood, which is consistent with a basic finding about climate change and rainfall: Because warmer air can hold more moisture, whenever it rains, it is likely to rain more intensely.

Another factor behind the recent flooding, the researchers found, was El Niño, the cyclical weather pattern in the Pacific. El Niño tends to cause large areas of high atmospheric pressure to form over central Brazil. These systems channel moist air southward from the tropics, leading to heavy rains in southern Brazil, Uruguay and northern Argentina.

Brazil is no stranger to rain-driven catastrophes. In 2011, floods in the state of Rio de Janeiro killed almost 1,000 people and displaced tens of thousands. The tragedy prompted Brazil’s national government to create a center for monitoring natural disasters and issuing early warnings.

This year, the center warned of potential flooding in Rio Grande do Sul almost a week before the rains started. Still, it’s unclear how many people the warnings reached, or how well people understood the dangers and how to respond, said Maja Vahlberg, a risk consultant for the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center who also contributed to the new analysis.

“The early warning is very important, but it’s not sufficient,” Dr. Rodrigues said.

The floods damaged roads, bridges, airports and transmission lines. They ruined soy, rice and wheat crops, which are essential to Brazil’s food supply and economy. Schools closed for weeks, leaving hundreds of thousands of students out of the classroom.

Experts and business groups have estimated that the damages could add up to upward of $30 billion, which might make it Brazil’s costliest disaster on record . Some economists have compared the floods with Hurricane Katrina, which caused comparable financial losses to the U.S. Gulf Coast, relative to the size of the American economy.

Years of scientific studies have warned that climate change would lead to more intense rainfall and flooding in southern Brazil. But politicians still struggle to accept and act on future climate risks, said Natalie Unterstell, the head of Talanoa, a climate policy research institute in Brazil.

“The willingness to listen to scientific information hasn’t translated into decision and investments based on long-term considerations,” she added.

Raymond Zhong reports on climate and environmental issues for The Times. More about Raymond Zhong

Manuela Andreoni is a Times climate and environmental reporter and a writer for the Climate Forward newsletter. More about Manuela Andreoni

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Human-caused warming has doubled the chances that southern Brazil will experience extreme, multiday downpours  like the ones that recently caused disastrous flooding there, a team of scientists said.

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Adopting Orphaned Oil Wells:  Students, nonprofit groups and others are fund-raising to cap highly polluting oil and gas wells  abandoned by industry.

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• Welcome to the Millennial Midlife Crisis

When I was 10, I thought my father had lost it and that he and my mother were gonna break up. He came home to our tiny apartment in the wilds of Toronto’s suburbs one random Sunday morning with a head of newly permed, newly blond hair. To make matters worse, he was wearing a buttery, green leather jacket that obviously cost an insane amount of money that we absolutely did not have. Before I even saw him, I heard my mom — calling out in a panicked voice, repeating the phrase, “Is this real?” over and over again. When he finally came into my room, I felt genuine fear. Have you ever seen a brown man with blond, curly hair? As my mom put it later that evening when she’d stopped shrieking, “It’s not right; it shouldn’t be real.”

Today, with my own newly aged eyes, I get that my father was going through an early midlife crisis . Lately, stuck as I am in my own midlife crisis that a dye job and leather jacket won’t fix, I’ve been thinking about my dad’s short-lived grasp at, I don’t even know what, extending his mortality? Prolonging his youth? He was 35, he had three kids, and he needed to drastically alter his appearance and spend an absurd amount of money on something stupid to prove to the world and his family and his bosses that this mortal coil will not take him unadorned, unchanged from the young man he used to be. (The blond hair didn’t last long, and the jacket sat in the closet, enclosed in its garment bag, until my parents finally did get a divorce years later.)

In the movies and TV I grew up watching, a midlife crisis was born out of a complacent sense of security; life was maybe going too well, and people just wanted a chance to flex their youth one more time. They bought a sports car, pierced something, got a weird tattoo. In the extreme, maybe they ditched their entire old lives and started fresh, did something that their kids are still in therapy about now.

For most millennials, the old material markers of midlife, like owning a home or spending 20-plus years at one job, are a nostalgic fantasy. Something we miss but never had. Even as we negotiate gray hairs, crow’s-feet, and a changing body, for many of us, little has changed in our career, home, and money prospects. Growing up, even though our family didn’t have a lot of money — my parents were refugees who moved from Pakistan to Canada without college degrees and drove taxis, waited tables, sold cars, and did whatever else they could to give us what little they could — things felt relatively fine. My parents always managed to clothe and feed us, we went out for dinner a few times a month, we always had a pretty decent roof over our heads; hell, they even managed to buy a house at one point. They had jobs, they left jobs, they got new jobs. They lived paycheck to paycheck, but they also weren’t worried about where that next check came from. I can’t imagine buying a house in downtown Toronto today on one income with less than $10,000 saved for a down payment. I actually want to cry just thinking about the prospect. Same with their ability to get a job when they needed one. I have 20 years of experience in my field at this point, and the majority of the time when I apply for a job, I never hear back.

Today, the real crisis isn’t about mortality; it’s that our lives and stations are unchanged from when we were 30 — or, hell, even 20. It’s about a distinct lack of comfort, of resources. My dad was trying to escape the doldrums of midlife with blond hair; meanwhile, I have friends who can’t even escape a bad marriage because they can’t afford the rent in a new place by themselves, especially if they want to keep their kids in the same school.

For as long as there have been “trend stories” about millennials loving pricey avocado toast, there have been actual millennials sounding the alarm bell about how crippling student-loan debt, a punishing job market, and rapidly rising housing costs have diminished our ability to get a secure footing in our lives and actually start to plan for our futures. And now, we’re not exactly staring out the window of our country house fondly remembering our salad days. We’re still grinding it out, perennially worried about losing it all.

Any single change in our jobs, homes, or health could upend our entire lives in ways that are just financially impossible.

Two years ago, I wrote about losing my ambition , about reshaping my priorities and putting the focus back on what I really want to do. I don’t need new highlights or a sports car; I just want the ability to plan for a secure future, to have optimism about my career prospects ten or even five years from now, to be able to afford to care for my family without the constant threat of layoffs, hunger, or eviction. I want time with my kids while I’m still healthy and aware, and I want to do work that is fulfilling and meaningful. And despite divorcing myself from a specific model of success in the process of leaving ambition behind, I do work hard. I work harder than ever, because I’m terrified of what happens if I don’t. I’ve spent the last year looking into what getting a real-estate license would entail, looking up how to become a plumber’s apprentice, and Googling “best graduate degrees if you want to get a steady job that pays good and will let you retire one day with dignity.” It’s a midlife crisis, no doubt, but it’s not born out of restlessness or a rosy remembrance of things past; it’s panic that this is as good as it’s going to get and what lies ahead could be worse.

I’m not just worried about myself — I have young kids, and my parents are getting old. Can I care for everyone and myself? I have a parent who will likely require some financial assistance as they age, and I don’t know if I have those funds. (A third of Americans happen to feel the same way , and just over half plan to assist their parents financially in their retirement years. For me and many of my friends, our current retirement plan is to drop dead at work.)

Almost all of my friends are in the middle of a job crisis, either looking for work or trying to figure out how to pivot to something else. I have a friend in her late 30s who has not been unemployed a day in her adult life. She’s the most organized, impressively career-focused person I know — she just got laid off from her job at a big tech company. Her most generous assessment of the landscape is that she probably won’t find another job for a year and may have to reconsider her career path entirely and start from scratch. She and her partner were seemingly financially secure and debating whether it makes sense to have a baby, but this has thrown everything off. Another friend in his mid-40s is worried it’s too late for him to have a baby and is also reconsidering what it is he should do with his life, but has no idea where to start. He’s been a steadily working creative who was one of the lucky ones to have bought a house 15 years ago, but he just sold it to give himself some wiggle room as he starts looking for steadier employment.

I keep waiting for the dam to break for something to happen that fixes the housing bubble, our debt crisis, or the job market, but that alarm’s been ringing and no one who can do anything about it seems to be interested in answering.

So while I do often ask myself, “What the fuck have I done with my life, and can I still survive out here doing what I do?,” the rub of midlife is that you do have so much more to lose. I don’t want to blow up my life and start from scratch. I just want to feel like the ground beneath my feet isn’t constantly shifting. So, like most of my generation who are used to this kind of precarity, I’ll just keep moving forward, making the best out of what I can. And let’s just hope I won’t be writing this same essay in another 20 years.

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