4 years since rice tariffication: Farmers' income per hectare shrank by 40%
MANILA, Philippines — A research and advocacy group has renewed the call to junk the Rice Liberalization Law, saying it has failed to deliver on the promise of boosting farmers' incomes and worsening the country's import dependency four years since it took effect.
An analysis by IBON foundation published Tuesday found that rice farmers' net returns per hectare decreased by around 40% – or from P32,976 to P19,680 – after rice tarrification was implemented in 2019.
"The effect is even worse when inflation is taken into account. When adjusted for 2018 prices, the real income rice farmers lost is worth P15,053,” the think tank said. “Not only did farmers lose money since rice liberalization, but their purchasing power also weakened as well.”
IBON foundation scored the current government for its “lack of interest” in supporting local production of rice in the long run, which placed the country’s rice farmers at risk of “plunging further in the spiral of import dependence.”
Rice watchdog Bantay Bigas also called for a repeal of Republic Act 11203, saying it pushed prices of unhusked rice to P7 per kilogram in Bicol in 2019 to 2020, which has now stagnated at P10 - P15 per kilogram on average.
Farmer Mila Lirio of Bantay Bigas said that rice farmers have yet to recover from the massive income loss brought by rising fuel prices, which drove up costs of pesticides, seeds and other farming necessities.
Rice-producing regions have also been ravaged by severe typhoons in the last three years, which lead to damaged rice fields and a drastic reduction in local rice harvests.
"The price of rice has now reached P40 - P50 per kilogram. We still haven't seen the P20 per kilogram of rice that was promised by President Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos, Jr. He’s now the secretary of the Department of Agriculture, but we still haven’t seen concrete solutions to our problems,' Lirio said in Filipino.
Bantay Bigas also estimated that rice farmers saw a drastic loss of income to a tune of P206 billion from the rice crisis and from imported rice.
Marcos said on Wednesday that he will implement a program to promote the shift of rice production from conventional seeds to hybrid seeds to increase crop production, according to the Presidential Communications Office.
The push for hybrid rice came after the chairman of SL Agritech Corporation, a private company engaged in the production of hybrid rice seeds, met with the president in Malacañang and proposed to convert 1.90 million hectares into areas with planted hybrid seeds in four years.
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