Research group IBON said that rice liberalization has undermined\nthe livelihoods of millions of farmers and most likely even pushed many into\nbankruptcy. It will only worsen the country\u2019s food insecurity, the group said, as\nalready seen with record high rice imports. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Enacted one year ago, the Rice Liberalization Law or\nRepublic Act (RA) 11203 removed quantitative restrictions on rice importation\nand replaced this with 35% tariff on rice imports from the region and higher\nfrom elsewhere. The law was justified as the solution to high rice prices in\n2018. Tariffs from the rice imports were also supposed to fund programs to make\nFilipino rice farmers competitive, eventually increasing their incomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBON said however that the influx of record rice imports has\ndevastated farmers\u2019 livelihoods. The Philippines imported a record 3.2 million\nmetric tons (MMT) of rice in 2019, surpassing the previous record of 2.4 MMT of\nrice imports in 2008 by 40 percent. That was the first time that the\nPhilippines gained the dubious distinction of being the world\u2019s biggest rice\nimporter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Huge rice imports caused palay farmgate prices to plummet,\nsaid IBON. The price of palay fell by 22.4% from Php20.14 per kilogram (\/kg) in\nend-December 2018 to Php15.63\/kg in the same period in 2019, said the group.\nSome major rice producing provinces such as Nueva Ecija, Isabela, and Laguna even\nreported palay prices as low as Php7\/kg and Php10\/kg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBON estimates that rice farmers in aggregate suffered a\ntotal income loss of Php84.8 billion in 2019 due to the catastrophic drop in\npalay farmgate prices. This is equivalent to an average income loss of some\nPhp35,328 per rice farmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Farmers groups have reported that as many as 200,000 farmers\nwere forced to stop planting rice due to income losses. Also, at least 3,000 of\nthe country\u2019s some 10,000 rice mills reportedly closed down due to the increase\nin rice imports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBON said that the widespread disruption of rice producers\nis intentional and the result of free market forces being unleashed on the\ncountry\u2019s backward agriculture. The group assailed the economic managers for\nusing high rice prices to justify pushing marginal and so-called unproductive\nfarmers and millers into bankruptcy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBON said that the country\u2019s food insecurity is getting\nworse under the Duterte administration especially because of the low government\npriority given to domestic agriculture including the rice industry. The\ncountry\u2019s rice importation grew from the equivalent of around 5% of total rice\nproduction in 2016 at the start of the Duterte administration to 26% of total\nrice production in 2019. Unprecedented rice imports are exposing the country\u2019s\ninability to produce sufficient quantities of its staple food, said the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBON said that the rice liberalization policy is another\nindication of government\u2019s long-time neglect and disregard of local rice production\nand agriculture in general. The group said that the government should not pit rice\nfarmers and rice consumers against each other. Farmers and consumers have a\ncommon interest in the protection and strengthening of the domestic rice\nindustry towards rice self-sufficiency. ###<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Photo from Bulatlat<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEWS<\/p>\n Rice liberalization has undermined the livelihoods of millions of farmers and most likely even pushed many into bankruptcy. It will only worsen the country\u2019s food insecurity as already seen with record high rice imports.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2048,14],"tags":[347,494,116,2171,2047,1396,1389,1400,1897],"class_list":["post-9067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banner","category-news","tag-duterte-administration","tag-philippine-agriculture","tag-philippine-economy","tag-philippine-rice-industry","tag-programs-and-policies","tag-rice-farmers","tag-rice-importation","tag-rice-imports","tag-rice-liberalization","wpautop"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 15:47:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9067"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9072,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9067\/revisions\/9072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}