There’s a deafening silence on a deepening crisis.

Philippine agriculture is suffering, but government planners barely talk about this now—instead they desperately try to hide the structural causes of the economic slowdown to continue their bankrupt neoliberal logic.

But official statistics can’t lie.

Philippine agriculture has fallen to its lowest share of gross domestic product (GDP) in history. Filipino farmers are trapped in a cycle of poverty and hunger, while ordinary Filipinos bear the burden of high prices for basic food. And despite President Marcos Jr serving as the agriculture secretary in the first two years of his presidency, agricultural traders and big businessmen are the ones reaping the benefits.

The sector has suffered from decades of a ‘development’ path shaped by neoliberal policies. Agriculture is a pillar of genuine economic development, but the government’s persistent adherence to neoliberalism, particularly market-oriented land use and trade liberalization, has severely weakened the country’s internal productive capacity. Once regarded as an agriculturally rich country, the Philippines has been transformed into a nation, especially its direct food producers, ironically wallowing in hunger and widespread poverty.

Declining land and jobs availability

The agriculture, forestry and fishing (AFF) sector recorded a 7.9% share of GDP in 2025, the lowest in Philippine history. While the AFF share has been declining for decades, this downturn accelerated in the late 1990s with the full implementation of neoliberal policies in agriculture.

One of the key policy reforms was Republic Act 8535, or the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA) of 1997, which facilitated the steady reduction of agricultural land nationwide. Under AFMA, the government mandated the delineation of Strategic Agriculture and Fisheries Development Zones (SAFDZs) to promote land use efficiency and maximize so-called economic returns from agricultural areas.

Time-series data on land use and sectoral GDP share clearly show the negative consequences of such profit-oriented land reclassification. From 1960 to 1991, agricultural land area expanded steadily from 7.7 million hectares to 9.97 million hectares, representing a 28.3% increase. This was after extensive land grabbing between 1971 and 1980 during the Marcos Sr dictatorship when Marcos cronies seized lands for sugarcane haciendas, banana plantations, forestry, mining, and other extractive industries.

However, following AFMA’s implementation, agricultural land area sharply declined, falling from 9.97 million hectares in 1991 to just 6.2 million hectares in 2022, a 38.2% decrease in 31 years, following massive land use conversions starting in the 1990s. AFMA has been instrumental in enabling widespread land conversions, largely serving the interests of landlords and real estate developers.

In 1988, before AFMA, the newly installed Cory Aquino government enacted Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) purportedly to facilitate the redistribution of land to small farmers. However, the Department of Agriculture (DA) acted in collusion with big landlords and used the AFMA-driven land reclassification and other land conversion mechanisms to deny farmers their land. Decades after CARP, seven out of 10 Filipino farmers remain landless, according to the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas.

During the same period, the number of farms continued to rise from 4.6 million farms in 1991 to 7.4 million farms in 2022, resulting in increasingly fragmented landholdings. At present, 56% of farms are smaller than half a hectare, 12.5% range from 0.5 to 0.99 hectare, and 25% are between 1 and 2.99 hectares in size.

The proliferation of smaller farms and the reduction of available agricultural land have also contributed to the steady decline of agriculture’s share in total employment. In 1991, agriculture accounted for 44.9% of total employment. By 2024, this figure had dropped to just 20.6%. Agricultural employment has also become extremely volatile. Labor Force Survey (LFS) data show that in July 2025 alone, the sector lost 2 million jobs, while 1.7 million were recovered the following month, leaving at least 300,000 agricultural workers displaced. This may be attributed to weather extremes, but such volatility has been observed even during fine weather.

The high level of informality in the sector further exposes the precariousness of employment. Typhoons and seasonality worsen this vulnerability, as farm workers are forced to seek alternative livelihoods during non-harvest periods. These realities are often obscured in official labor statistics, masking the true depth and instability of agricultural employment.

Poor farmers, hungry nation

Farmers and fisherfolk remain among the poorest basic sectors in Philippine society. The latest poverty statistics show particularly high poverty incidence among indigenous peoples (32.4%), followed by fisherfolk (27.4%) and farmers (27%). These sectors significantly overlap, as the majority of indigenous peoples are also engaged in farming and fishing. Notably, these figures are based on an extremely low poverty threshold of just Php92 per person per day, or Php462 per day for a family of five.

This widespread poverty is unsurprising given that agricultural workers are among the lowest paid in the economy. The average daily basic pay (ADBP) for agricultural workers stands at only Php365.57—far below the national average of Php498. Mandated regional minimum wages also set consistently lower rates for agricultural workers compared to their non-agricultural counterpart. These wages fall dramatically short of the family living wage estimated by IBON, which places the minimum at Php1,240 per day for a family of five.

The chronic neglect of agriculture has not only impoverished farmers but has also ingrained widespread hunger. According to the latest report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UNFAO), 37.8 million Filipinos are moderately or severely food insecure—the highest number in Southeast Asia. The same report also estimates that 51 million Filipinos cannot afford a healthy diet, the second-highest figure in the region.

The calamity of imports liberalization

One of the most decisive moments in the agricultural decline was the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which accelerated the dismantling of domestic protection. Since joining the WTO, the country has given up trade protections and government subsidies and intervention, and the Philippine market has been flooded with cheaper imported goods, undercutting local producers and farmers.

The Rice Tariffication Law (RTL), implemented in 2019, was the final commitment to the WTO, with the Philippines converting quantitative restrictions to tariffs and the Marcos Jr administration lowering these to historic lows. Prices of locally produced rice have become more volatile and at several times more expensive than imported rice, enabling traders to depress palay prices and exploit farmers further. Rice smuggling has also intensified as a result of trade liberalization, with no meaningful penalties imposed to date. The RTL has been catastrophic, but the Marcos Jr administration has even expanded it and disregarded repeated calls from farmers and small producers to repeal the law.

Agricultural trade deficit ballooned from just US$42 million in 1994 to US$11.06 billion in 2025, peaking at US$11.8 billion in 2022. By 2025, the total value of agricultural trade as share of GDP shrank to -2.3% of GDP from a 1.9% share in 1985. In 2024, the Philippines also recorded the largest agricultural trade deficit among ASEAN countries.

Food self-sufficiency in basic commodities has likewise fallen to historic lows. Rice self-sufficiency declined to just 71.7% in 2024—the lowest level in 37 years. In contrast, the average domestic utilization ratio for rice in ASEAN in 2025 stood at 115.2%, with countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar achieving more than 100% self-sufficiency. The Philippines ranked third lowest in the region, ahead only of Brunei and Malaysia.

Import Dependency Ratios (IDRs) for key agricultural commodities have surged over the past three decades. In 1993, IDRs were for rice (3.2%), garlic (3.7%), coffee (0.0%), beef (12.0%), pork (0.1%), and dressed chicken (0.0%). By 2022, these figures had risen sharply for rice (23.0%), garlic (94.5%), coffee (61.9%), beef (50%), pork (30.4%), and dressed chicken (11.9%). Major sources of imported agricultural products include ASEAN (33%), the United States (19%), the European Union and the United Kingdom combined (10%), and China (9%).

Rising import dependence and widening trade deficits reflect the systemic erosion of Philippine agriculture. Although the sector posted a 3.1% growth rate in 2025 following a 1.5% contraction in 2024, its average growth over the past decade has been a mere 0.8 percent. This demonstrates that agricultural stagnation cannot be attributed solely to seasonal shocks such as typhoons or El Niño. Yet instead of strengthening local producers, successive governments have used crises as justification to further marginalize agriculture in national development.

Favoring investors, neglecting farmers

In 2024, the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr enacted Republic Act 12252, extending the maximum land lease period for foreign investors from 50 to 99 years. This policy directly benefits foreign corporations and capitalists by allowing them long-term control and to profit over Philippine lands, including agricultural lands. It also loosens control on the kinds of investments in the country’s land and natural resources.

Meanwhile, big agribusinesses and foreign corporations also enjoy generous tax incentives under the CREATE MORE law and benefit from eased regulations through the revised Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Code. Twelve corporations engaged in agricultural production are in the latest BusinessWorld Top 1,000 corporations, with combined gross revenues of Php236.41 billion. Several are multinational firms, while others are owned by politically connected elites or among the country’s wealthiest families. This underscores a stark reality under the current agricultural trade regime—poor Filipino farmers consistently lose, while capital-backed corporations and political elites emerge as clear winners.

The Marcos Jr administration allocates a meager share of public resources to agriculture. Agriculture and agrarian reform combined receive just 3% of the national budget, while corruption-ridden infrastructure programs command nearly 10 percent.

This deliberate underfunding creates space for private corporations and foreign entities to dominate the sector. It is telling that the current agriculture secretary, himself a businessman, openly calls on private corporations to invest in agriculture. The Department of Agriculture is currently pursuing Php3.5 trillion in public-private investments across multiple areas: product support systems (Php1.8 trillion), infrastructure and logistics (Php816.2 billion), commodity sectors (Php805.8 billion), innovation system enablers (Php85.5 billion), and sustainable and alternative agriculture systems (Php6.3 billion). This strategy enables large-scale profiteering from agricultural lands, while small farmers continue to suffer bankruptcies and poverty.

When farmers raise their voice

Agriculture’s role as a driver of national development has been deliberately sidelined, because power interests benefit from keeping the sector backward and impoverished. Landlessness, precarious employment, and backbreaking working conditions persist because the prevailing economic and political system is embedded in foreign and local elite interests and priorities, which prefer profits over food security, agrarian reform and rural development. They also try to silence the farmers, using state machinery and patronage politics.

But the farmers and peasants are not retreating. They have been talking about the long-standing, deepening crisis for a long time now. They know the basic problems of agriculture and how government’s pro-foreign and pro-landlord neoliberal policies have only worsened these problems. They know the solutions—they have even put in place their own sustainable farming methods and self-sustaining agrarian reforms where government neglect has prevailed. For the farmers, the basic solution is clear—a people-centered economic planning that transforms the weak and hollow national economy into a robust foundation that prioritizes agriculture, industry, and people’s rights and welfare. These can be done, because when the farmers raise their voice, everyone listens.