The declaration of a food security emergency by the Marcos Jr. administration is an admission that it is not competent to resolve the food crisis even as it has all the tools in the shed to prevent hoarding, smuggling that can pe proven immediately when the import records of the Bureau of Customs (BOC) do not match the volumes approved by the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) and the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI), as was the case of a Mindanao rice importer grilled by lawmakers recently.
“The declaration of a food security emergency over the rice crisis is nothing but a shallow attempt to distract the public from the Marcos Jr government’s failure to address the underlying causes of high rice prices and food insecurity,” Kilusang Magbubulid ng Pilipinas (KMP) chairman emeritus and former agrarian reform secretary Rafael Mariano argued. “Despite claims of urgent measures, the government’s response, through the Department of Agriculture (DA), has been limited to short-term fixes that continue to prioritize neoliberal policies over substantial support for local farmers and relief for consumers.”
Mariano has explained, and the government has not refuted, that the solution to the rice crisis is not more importation or half-hearted measures like the Rice-for-All program. Instead, the government must tap into existing funds that could significantly slash rice prices and grant consumers immediate relief. Under existing laws, like the amended Agricultural Tariffication Act (ATA), also known as Republic Act No. 12078 or RA 12078, the government has access to more than P25- billion in cash- P7 billion from the buffer fund and excess tariff collections and P8 billion from priority programs as well as the P10-billion from the Palay Procurement Fund.
The P25 billion is enough to procure 1 million metric tons (MMT) of palay from Filipino farmers at P25 per kilo. This volume, he stressed, will produce more than 650 million kilos of rice at a recovery rate of 65% that can be sold at P25 per kilo to provide direct support for consumers and stabilize prices, even if it means government is technically losing P8.75 billion. If the state wants to still profit from the sale of rice, it has to sell the staple at P40 per kilo for a gain of P1 billion. It is obvious, Mariano explained, that the Marcos Jr administration does not want to stop its policy of perpetually favoring traders-importers-hoarders and rice exporting countries rather than Filipino farmers.
The government’s hyperfocus on reducing tariffs and pushing for imported rice has done nothing to reduce rice prices since 2019, when RA 11203 was enacted. Rice, our main staple has since remained unaffordable for many Filipinos. Mariano questioned the very basis of the food security emergency.
“This food security emergency declaration is a smokescreen, a way to avoid taking real action. It is not about solving the rice crisis—it is about avoiding the real solutions that involve supporting local rice production, providing just farm gate prices for our farmers, and strengthening the country’s agricultural sector and rice production. Without genuine land reform, improved agricultural support, and protection for our farmers, the never-ending rice crisis will persist,” he maintained.
The KMP also called for a genuine, relevant and appropriate response to the crisis—one that prioritizes local farmers and domestic agriculture, ensures fair prices for farmers and delivers affordable rice to Filipino households.
“Anything less is simply an attempt to cover up the failure of neoliberal policies that have long harmed our farmers and consumers,” Mariano concluded. KMP noted that Marcos Jr. spent years as concurrent DA secretary and pledged that the farm sector needed his attention “to raise food output” and “prevent recurrent shortages” aside from fulfilling his campaign pledge to bring down the price of rice to P20 a kilo. He failed on all counts even as he continued his management by partying, watching F1 races in Singapore, and making pilgrimages to foreign countries.
From flip-flopping on import volumes for rice and sugar to his failing to craft a viable solution to the land conversions and grabbing of irrigated farmlands for transformation into subdivisions and commercial centers, Marcos Jr. has shown he hasn’t got the chops to improve the lot of farmers, whose suffering have worsened via Dolorosa since 2016, when Rodrigo Duterte failed in his promise to speed up land distribution, to 2022, when Marcos Jr. promised to complete the emancipation of landless peasants.
Talk is, indeed, cheap and performance is just too expensive for entitled bureaucrats. After retreating from his vow to sell rice at P20 per kilo, which he said was an aspiration, he now pledges to control rice prices by emptying NFA warehouses of rotting rice that the DA never emptied to influence rice prices. The reason? A law passed by the Duterte regime barred NFA from playing a market role. It was a case of the government tying its own hands and letting the criminals have full control of the trade. At the rate the administration is plunging the country into economic despair, one must recall how the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo described the US in the 1930s: “There is so much wealth and so much misery at the same time, that it seems incredible that people can endure such class difference, and accept such a form of hunger while on the other hand, the millionaires throw away millions on stupidities.”
You can say that this whole food security emergency shtick is one way of showing that the Marcos Jr. administration is doing something to “solve” a problem of its own making. When a crisis comes, it is normal for regimes to create shows that are akin to the bread and circuses of Roman times.
After pushing the myth that the country is progressing, the regime must show that it has nerves of steel to compel mischief makers to follow its bidding, like punishing rice hoarders and smugglers who control supply. Instead, what we find horrible is that those committing economic sabotage go scot-free and the poor punished by high prices. “It is not great wealth in a few individuals that proves a country is prosperous, but great general wealth evenly distributed among the people . . . It is the struggling masses who are the foundation [of this country]; and if the foundation be rotten or insecure, the rest of the structure must eventually crumble,” said Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for US president.
