The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), dubbed as the world’s premier propagator of rice science for poverty reduction, is celebrating its 65th year of establishment in the country. Ironically, IRRI’s host country, the Philippines, is going through its worst rice crisis that is evident in record-high prices, declining production, and increasing import dependency. Filipino farmers have remained the poorest among the poor.
IRRI was built from joint funding by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations with the vision of reducing poverty in Asia through rice research. But the institution has only become a cog in the implementation of neoliberal policies in global agriculture. This isn’t surprising because, despite its “independent and non-profit” identity, many of its researches are funded by giant agricultural biotechnology transnational corporations (TNCs) such as Syngenta, Bayer, and Monsanto, among others. IRRI has undoubtedly served TNC interests.
No lessons learned
In the Philippines, IRRI is responsible for the proliferation of so-called high-yielding varieties (HYVs), “IR8” or “miracle rice”, which led to a major transformation of local agricultural practices. From being natural and organic, Philippine agriculture shifted to high chemical input dependence and in the process lost thousands of local rice varieties.
IRRI supported the World Bank’s Green Revolution program during the Marcos dictatorship and promoted HYVs developed by TNCs. The HYVs were sold to farmers along with the chemical fertilizers and pesticides required to achieve their full productivity. The Marcos dictatorship coupled the Green Revolution program with a credit program, Masagana 99, so that farmers could buy these expensive inputs while still paying rent on the land they were tilling. The whole scheme was a fiasco – the World Bank and IRRI pushed Filipino farmers to indebtedness and massive hunger and poverty.
Philippine agriculture has been condemned to 99% chemical farming, exposing farmers and the entire population to serious health and environmental risks, while perpetuating food insecurity. The latest available data show that 45% of the country’s arable land is moderately to severely eroded with 5.2 million hectares classified as severely eroded, as of 2019. More than half of the country’s lands are experiencing up to 50% decline in productivity due to soil erosion from chemical fertilizer use, soil pollution, and increased acidity. This condition has also added to the country’s high vulnerability to climate-related hazards.
Despite lessons from history, the Philippine government through the Department of Agriculture (DA) holds on to neoliberalism in agriculture, continues to host IRRI, and takes its cue from the political recommendations of the institution on how to reach that elusive agricultural development.
Declining production
In 2024, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) recorded palay production at 19.1 million metric tons (MMT), 4.8% lower than the previous year’s tally of 20.1 MMT and the lowest in the past four years. The PSA attributed the decline in palay outputs to the strong El Niño effects and the destructive typhoons in the latter half of 2024.
The estimated overall agricultural damages due to El Niño reached Php15.3 billion, affecting more than 300,000 farmers and fisherfolk and resulting in more than 700,000 metric tons (MT) crop losses. Rice production was severely affected, incurring Php5.93 billion in damages, with palay losses of 330,717 MT on 109,481 hectares. Meanwhile, the successive tropical cyclones in the last quarters of 2024 caused more than Php23 billion in agricultural damages. In total, the DA estimated the total agricultural damages brought by all climate-related disasters to Php57.8 billion, a 136.4% increase compared to 2023.
The DA is optimistic about recovering palay harvest of 20.5 MMT in 2025 but this is unfortunately still too low to meet the demands of a growing population. Production of milled rice has been declining by an annual average of 0.88% in the last five years. The average annual production level of 12.4 MMT falls far short of the projected rice consumption of over 15 MMT in 2025.
There is obviously a problem with production because of persistent fundamental problems of landlessness, lack of state support, natural resource degradation and increased climate vulnerability. Yet the solution of the Marcos Jr administration is stubbornly still just importation.
Increasing import dependency
Rice self-sufficiency reached a 24-year low in 2022 at 77%, which indicates increasing dependence on rice imports. The ratio increased slightly to 78.5% in 2023 but still failed to recover the peak of 93.4% in 2017.
The Marcos Jr administration has only retained the faulty Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) and even extended some aspects of its implementation, such as the 5-year extension of the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) for the rice industry modernization.
Bongbong Marcos also hastened the reduction of rice tariffs through Executive Order (EO) 62 in 2024, where the rice tariffs were decreased to 15% from the previous 35% in-quota and 50% out-quota tariffs. The president hoped to stabilize rice prices and make the staple affordable to Filipino consumers.
The country is about to import a record-high 5.2 MMT in 2025, based on estimates by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), a huge jump from the 4.7 MMT in 2024. This figure is equivalent to a huge 42% of projected local rice production. Rice trade liberalization threatens to exert significant pressure on local rice farmers especially if these are priced below locally produced rice. This will reduce the rice self-sufficiency to a record low. In 2025, the Philippines will maintain its place as the number one rice importer in the world.
Cartel prices
Rice inflation in March 2024 was recorded at 24.4%, the highest since 2009. Retail prices of regular and well-milled rice ranged from Php50 to Php55 per kilo, while the price of special rice reached up to Php65 per kilo. On average, retail prices of rice in 2024 were more than 20% higher in 2023.
On the other hand, the 2024 average farmgate prices of dry and clean palay were Php23 and Php25 (fancy variety), per kilo respectively, pushing tens of thousands of rice farmers to bankruptcy. The unreasonably huge gap between the farmgate price of palay and retail price of rice was subjected to an investigation by the Lower House, but there was no definite resolution. The DA up to now denies the existence of a rice trading cartel.
But there is obviously monopoly pricing. Despite lower rice tariffs, market prices of imported rice have remained high. The president declared a food security emergency on rice in the beginning of 2025, directing the National Food Authority (NFA) to release buffer stocks to be sold at Php36 per kilo at Kadiwa stalls and other outlets. The Marcos Jr government even imposed a maximum suggested retail price (MSRP) for imported rice at Php45 per kilo, following the declining global rice prices. But these were mainly for show and government efforts are still not directed toward relieving the local rice industry from the onslaught of cheaper imports nor towards supporting local rice production.
Trade liberalization in the end mainly benefits traders – not the consumers, and definitely not the farmers. As it is, about 7.5 million Filipino families are experiencing involuntary hunger, more than double the 2.9 million figure at the start of the Marcos Jr administration.
Legacy of hardships
IRRI’s 65 years of existence is a legacy of devastation – the promotion of high-input varieties, widespread use of chemical inputs including synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, intensive monocropping systems, over-extraction of groundwater, and inefficient use of water resources, among others. It’s a litany of devastations – of natural resources and farmers’ lives.
The institution might just say that it is merely located in the Philippines and cannot be expected to have a profound impact on the country’s planning for agricultural development. Yet IRRI keeps pushing rice technologies that make Philippine agriculture profitable mainly for traders and agrichemical TNCs, and keeps giving the Philippine government justifications to implement neoliberal policies supposedly to achieve higher returns. IRRI’s continued existence and influence over the country’s agricultural policies is further proof that the Philippine government chooses profits over people.
